AU3: Rhapsody and Fugue in Who Major
by Lilac Reverie
Summary: Alternating Universes Series, Part Three: The Doctor and Rose's twin go in search of Corin's and Rose's missing son. Looking Glass sequel! Ten/Rose/TenB/RoseB and several surprise guest stars.
1. Prelude Solenne

_**Author's Note: T**his is third in my series _Alternating Universes_, after _Through the Looking Glass_ - the original, not the Redux. Therefore, below you will find the unregeneratable Ten and his twin Rose. New readers may wish to read my other two stories in this series, _Sea Change_ and the aforementioned _Through the Looking Glass_, before diving in._

_A note on my titles this time:_

_A__** Rhapsody **__is__** "**__an __instrumental__ composition __irregular __in __form __and __suggestive __of __improvisation" - which describes any DW adventure fairly well, no?_

_A __**Fugue**__ is – my paraphrase - a piece wherein the first instrument or voice begins a melody, then another joins in and repeats and varies that melody, then another, and another, etc, until they all wrap around each other like octopus vines and the world falls apart. Or not. My fugue is to come later. (There is another – also legitimate - use of 'fugue' somewhere herein, as well.)_

_The rest of my chapter titles herein are various musical terms and instructions, such as might be used to label and annotate different movements in a symphony. The reader may look them up for entertainment value; knowing each one is not necessary to enjoy the story._

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**Alternating Universes, Part Three:**

**Rhapsody and Fugue in Who Major**

The Doctor and Rose's twin go in search of Corin's and Rose's missing son,  
finding several surprising guest stars along the way.

**Prelude Solenne**

_**FIND MY SON**_

Those three words, scrawled in blotchy black ink across the page of Corin's journal, had sent the Doctor, Rose's twin and Jenny flying back into the TARDIS and back in time to this morning, April tenth, sixteen years and ten minutes after they had last seen Corin and his Rose. The blue box landed in the small clearing in the center of the beech copse on one side of the back garden. The trees – they were larger, though fewer, than before – were just beginning to burst into emerald green, a light frosting of leaves showing through their glossy brown buds.

The time travelers rushed across the grass and onto the terrace, finding Corin slumped in a chair near the mansion's back door, head in hands. His journal lay open on the table beside him, pen dropped on top of it after writing the words.

"Let me guess," Corin said humorlessly. "You were driving." He looked up at the Doctor. "You're late. It's past twelve. I thought you hadn't gotten the message in time."

"I'm sorry," replied the Doctor, softly. He didn't know what else to say to his twin. Corin's face was etched with deep worry lines, the ghosts of tear tracks on his cheeks. He looked as though he'd aged 10 years in just the last day. There were hints of silver at his temples.

Rose didn't have the same reticence. "What happened to Tyler?" she asked, full of worry over the four-year-old son she'd left behind less than an hour ago to her.

But Corin was shaking his head. "Not Tyler. Joshua. We... He was conceived on Gallifrey." He took a deep breath. "It was the TARDIS. I don't know if he stole it or it stole him, but they're both gone. And they shouldn't be. The coral was only half grown; only had a few controls on it. It shouldn't have been able to go anywhere. But it did."

The Doctor asked, "Are you sure it went under its own power? Not stolen?"

Corin nodded. "It was in my lab at Torchwood. Full security, cameras watching. It's on tape. Joshua was working on it, climbed inside. And it just faded out."

"When did this happen?"

"Late yesterday afternoon. We've been searching all night, using our instruments – and the police, but can't find any trace."

"The TARDIS should be able to track it." The Doctor stepped back and held out a hand, inviting Corin to join them.

"Where's Rose?" asked her twin, quickly.

"She's upstairs. No," he added quickly, as she made to go inside. "Donna's with her. I don't think... seeing you..." He shrugged apologetically. Rose nodded, understanding.

The four returned down the path to the TARDIS. The Doctor and Jenny strode quickly to the central terminal, pushing buttons and peering at the screen. Corin, with Rose beside him, leaned against the pillar just inside the entrance, pain from several sources kicking him in the midsection.

Sure enough, it didn't take long for the TARDIS to pick up the trail of her daughter heading out in to space. Luckily, the baby coral hadn't slipped between times, but traveled straight to her destination: Gallifrey. "I wonder if it didn't home in on the gallinium?" asked Jenny.

"You coming?" the Doctor asked Corin, who simply nodded, then sent a message to his wife on their private telepathic link, letting her know the status of the search. Within a few seconds, they were halfway across the universe, _whooshing_ into sight in a high valley; the end of the coral's trail.

Corin burst out of the TARDIS with the others hard on his heels. "Joshua! _Josh!_" His call echoed back from the nearby hills surrounding the valley, startling several varieties of winged creatures into the air, but there was no reply.

The Doctor had his sonic screwdriver out, scanning the area, homing in on a patch of ground nearby that showed traces of the recent presence of something large and heavy, now gone. The red grasses were crushed and flattened in an irregular pattern about six feet across; they hadn't yet either died or begun to spring back, so neither the appearance nor the removal of the baby TARDIS had occurred very long before. "There's no trail leading away, though, through space _or_ time – or on the ground. Where the hell did it go?"

"Doctor?" came Rose's voice, tentative, a bit shaken. She was staring out across the valley floor, turning slowly.

He looked, but saw nothing but red grass and silver-leafed trees, under the orange skies. "What is it, love?"

"I... I keep seeing something, out of the corner of my eye. Just flashes of..."

"Of what?"

She turned to him, then, focusing on him squarely. "The outline of a city. All around us."

Behind her, Jenny gasped, eyes purposely unfocused. "I can see it too! Just for a bit... then it's gone."

The Doctor and Corin whirled around. While Corin was trying to see what the women saw, though, the Doctor was focused on the actual landscape. He gasped and staggered back a few steps, as horror crept down his spine. "Corin... do you know where we are?" Corin turned to look where the Doctor was staring: a peculiar rock formation atop a nearby hill: several tall, slender columns of weathered rock, lined up right along the ridge. He didn't have to count them.

"The Nine Lords..." he whispered, horrified. His knees buckled, and he sat on the ground, hard. "The Citadel..."

The baby TARDIS had brought Joshua to the exact spot on this uninhabited planet where the capital city stood in another universe.

Corin looked back at the Doctor, eyes huge. "No. Please don't tell me..."

The Doctor slowly brought his hand back up, and clicked a new setting into the screwdriver. He pointed it at the recently-crushed vegetation again...

Corin didn't have to ask; his twin's eyes said it all.

His son was on the original Gallifrey, inside the Time Lock. Beyond all hope of retrieval.


	2. Adagio Lacrimoso

**Adagio Lacrimoso**

Tyler Gallifrey was just short of twenty years old that spring. He'd finished high school five years before, the same year as his best friend and uncle, Tony Tyler – he'd skipped up several grades through the years. Now he was fiendishly preparing to defend his doctoral thesis in some obscure branch of mathematics, having devoured university at approximately the same rate as he did breakfast cereal.

His younger sister, Donna, was following only slightly slower, studying pre-med at Cambridge. Rose's poker face had not been tested when, at only seven years old, Donna had announced her intention to become a brain surgeon – she knew her daughter was fully capable of it, and indeed, Donna's pursuit of that goal had never wavered in the years since.

Rose often thought privately that it was a good thing both her older children had been born with their father's supreme, unshakable self-confidence as well as his incredible intellect, because their younger brother put them both to shame.

Joshua's first day of school had set the tone. His parents knew that he would inevitably skip more than one grade – his brilliance was unmistakable; but they wanted to start him off at the same level as his age group, to maximize the social opportunities. When Rose picked him up that afternoon, the teacher reported he'd simply sat in a corner, staring, for most of the day, but she was sure he'd warm up and come out of his shell quickly.

When they got home, Joshua pulled out his laptop and sat down with it at the kitchen table without a word, working on something while Rose prepared dinner. She let him be. A couple of hours later, he asked her to look at what he'd done. She sat down with a smile – which quickly disappeared.

He'd taken the online A-Levels practice quizzes.

All of them.

And aced every single one.

He never went back to school. Instead, he spent his days tagging along with one parent or the other – usually Corin. Shortly after Joshua's birth, Corin had walked into the Atomic Energy Research Laboratory at Cambridge and up to the world-renown team of top scientists working on the problem of cold fusion, and calmly told them what they were doing wrong. And then proceeded to prove it. Five years later, the first commercial cold fusion reactor in the world went online, and Cambridge marked the ceremony by giving Corin a Doctorate in Nuclear Physics – a real one, not an honorary degree, citing the reactor itself as his qualifying thesis (along with the fifty-odd papers he'd co-written with the other members of the team on various aspects). Nobody argued that the thesis hadn't been successfully defended. After that, Corin divided his time between teaching graduate physics students, monitoring post-docs, and continuing to work at Torchwood, both helping with the general business as it came along, and growing and modifying the TARDIS coral. Joshua was his almost-constant shadow, soaking up his father's vast knowledge without even trying. (He'd even taken a turn or two teaching class; if you want to see some doctoral candidates sit up and pay attention, put them in front of a ten-year-old who knows more than they do on their own subject.)

He disappeared overnight the first time when he was twelve. He'd been at Torchwood, fiddling with the coral, and told Rose he was going home by himself; he had something he wanted to check out on the way. She let him go; he'd been traveling by himself for two years, and was quite capable of navigating between Torchwood and the house. When he never made it home for supper, or even by bedtime, they called both the police and the Torchwood team, scouring the routes he might have taken – and monitoring the phones for a ransom call. When the police brought him home the next morning, they reported they'd found him cheerfully helping to serve breakfast at a homeless shelter, having stayed there overnight.

Corin, white-faced, called down all the wrath of the Time Lords upon the head of his errant son, and threatened to do what he'd sworn he never would: put a permanent mental tag in his son's mind.

Rose, even whiter, threatened to go one better, and put a GPS chip under Joshua's skin like a pet dog.

It was Tyler who calmly came home with the answer in his pocket (literally): one of Granddad Pete's new Kidz Fōnz, with a remotely-activated GPS locator chip inside _its_ carcass, rather than his brother's. Joshua tearfully promised _never_ to leave home without it – fully charged – and he never did. He wasn't thoughtless or cruel, after all, and always conscientiously checked in with Rose every few hours after that, not wanting to _ever_ cause his mother the kind of terror she'd felt that day.

After that, he'd regularly go off on walkabouts, once getting as far as the Scottish border before turning back south again.

Corin and Rose had held many a frank discussion about what to do with him, and always, inevitably came back to the same theme: let him be. He was his father's son through and through – more, he was _the Doctor's_ son, the part of Corin that was still Time Lord. "He's going to have to find his own path through life, darling. Everybody does, but him more than anybody," Corin reminded his bondmate on several occasions. So they let him be, and let him go. Rose insisted that he learn basic self-defense, and Joshua soaked up two or three kinds of martial arts as fast as he did languages (of which he already spoke half a dozen fluently), earning – rightfully – his black belts in record time. Of course.

There were other words, too, besides 'let him be'; words that rang in Corin's mind in the lonely midnight hours as he watched his youngest son grow, and wrestled with his own diminished self. Words he never shared with Rose. Words that taunted him with their inevitability, to be written on that blank half-page in his journal, to the Doctor.

"Come back." Come back, and take my son, our son, your son. Take him with you, and teach him all you know, all that I've forgotten. Show him his heritage, and let him, help him, grow into his true self: a Time Lord.

For Joshua had been born with two hearts.

Yet Corin kept refusing to write those words, hanging on to his son for one more day, one more week, one more year. For what father can bear to watch his beloved son walk away from him, _knowing _it would be forever? More, what father can deliberately set those events in motion? Worst yet, what man can do that to his precious wife, the mother of that son? (As he wrestled with those words, that page, Corin came to a greater appreciation for the hell he'd put Jackie through during those years of traveling with Rose, before they'd come here.)

And then...

As he wrote those three dreadful words in his journal, as he waited (and waited) for the Doctor to return, as he collapsed in the red grass of Gallifrey, unable to breath or see, he knew.

He'd waited too long.

^..^

Rose saw Corin collapse, while she picked up from the Doctor's mind what had happened to Joshua. Shocked, horrified, but more concerned with Corin than herself or her bondmate at the moment, she started to walk over to him – right through the area where the baby TARDIS had been sitting.

"Rose, NOOO!" yelled the Doctor. Too late.

_**CRAA-AA-AAA-AACKKKKKK!**_

A sound like thunder from a lightning strike just feet away knocked the travelers flat in the grass and rolled away across the valley, echoing for long minutes back and forth between the hills. A flash brighter than a thousand stars burned through their eyelids, leaving them blinded, listening to the echoes, until the shadows began to creep back across their sight.

"ROSE? _ROSE?_" The Doctor frantically crawled, searching with outstretched hands, through the grass in front of him, where she had been just moments before. As his sight returned, he stood, dizzily, and spun in a circle, adding the visual search. "ROOOOOOOOOOOOOSE! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and he collapsed again, folding in on himself, his mind reaching to and flinching away from the empty spot within simultaneously, over and over.

She was gone, both from the planet, and from his mind. Sucked into the crack between realities, just as Joshua had been. Trapped with him, behind the Time Lock.


	3. Capriccioso e Gaudioso

**Capriccioso e Gaudioso**

Joshua was listening to the stars dance.

He'd heard them ever since he could remember. His earliest memories – and they were quite a bit earlier than the average human – were of lying in his crib, looking out the window and up at the stars, listening to their dance.

As he grew older, and absorbed the intellectual concepts within astronomy and the various 'earth sciences', he began to be able to tease apart the different melodies and harmonies, identifying their sources. The first was the deep, deep constant _basso continuo_ line of the Earth itself as it revolved and rotated its away around the Sun, following her in their mutual dance through the cosmos. Second was the even deeper, hypnotic melody of the Sun, with its pips and bongs of million-mile flares, and the constant _vibrato_ rumbling of the atomic churning deep within. He found the other planets and – tinier – the echoes of their moons; long before he had their names, he listened to their orbits. Then, faintly, so faintly, the tiniest breath on impossibly high piccolos, he heard the stars themselves, and listened to their waltzes and minuets, the slow, sexy tangos of binary stars and the fast, competing raps of pulsars. (Years later, when he discovered through the internet the vast, wide world of human music, his favorite hobby was matching songs or styles with the various melodies he'd heard all his life. It was amazing how much of that music was subconsciously inspired by the heavens – quite literally.)

He never spoke to his mother or his older siblings about the music, somehow knowing they couldn't hear it. But his father...

One night when he was about four, Corin found him standing out in the yard, beyond the lights of the house, looking up at the stars. He knelt beside his son, and turned his own eyes and ears upward, searching for the harmonies. Joshua looked at him then, and saw that he knew. "Why?" he asked. "Why can we hear them, but no-one else can?"

"Because we're Time Lords – or, we're part Time Lord." So Corin began to teach his son about his heritage, and what it meant; telling him what he'd never told his other children, the details of the story of his own 'birth', twinned from the flesh and memories of the last of the Time Lords; how they came to be in this other, separate universe – and how his mother, too, had become Two, in order to follow her other love, the Doctor – his original self – back to their original universe.

So Joshua learned of Love, eternal and powerful, and once he knew its song, he began seeking it out as well, listening in the markets and offices and laboratories. He heard it in a million variations – and learned to hear the other human songs, too, bright and dark: joy and sorrow, respect and hate, desire and revulsion. He listened, and watched them all weave themselves together, around and around, the majestic dance of humanity. "That's why you have two hearts," Corin told him. "So that you have enough room for all the world inside them."

"You mean the universe, don't you, Dad?" Corin sat back on his heels, rocked. Already his son was thinking far, far beyond any visible borders.

When he was eight, Joshua began to hear a new melody, underlying all the rest. Slowly he began picking it out, finding it part of every other song in existence. He worked on it by himself, puzzling it out, wondering about this new, added dimension. Ah.. Dimension. That was it. He was hearing Time itself, tying the universe together and pulling it slowly along in perfect synchronization.

He realized, then, that he heard it best in his father's lab at Torchwood, working on or around the TARDIS coral. He'd helped his father with it his entire life, going by the lab at least twice a week, feeding and shaping the coral, watching as Corin helped it become attuned to the harmonics of this universe. They stretched it carefully, and gently grafted on the necessary attachments for the controls it would need to interface with its eventual pilot. (Pilots. Corin knew from the beginning that Joshua would be piloting the TARDIS as well as he himself would, and would eventually take over completely when Corin got too old for gallivanting around the galaxy – if, indeed, it even got that far before he did – or before he was forced to call the Doctor back.) So Joshua began going to the lab by himself, ostensibly tinkering with the coral, but really just listening, and learning; reaching farther and farther out, forward and back, out to the cosmos and in to the atomic level; weaving all the universe together. And as he grew stronger, more skilled, the coral also grew, and they became entangled, a part of each other.

When he was twelve, he began to hear yet other songs, vocal ones. He realized the inner thoughts and needs of the people around him were seeping through. Once he heard them consciously, though, the floodgates opened, and all the world's troubles began inundating him. This time, he did turn to Corin, who (over the course of a quickly-arranged summer camping trip, just the two of them up in the remote Scottish highlands) helped him learn to control his mindskills, letting in only what he wanted to hear while keeping all the mad cacophony blocked out.

After that, he was able to focus on those around him, those he could actually help, and – not without regret! – let the vast majority of the suffering slide by unnoticed.

However, a short time later, he again began to hear one tiny persistent whisper, over and over. He heard it first inside the TARDIS – it had begun hollowing out at last – but after a few weeks, he would hear it elsewhere, too. Whenever his busy mind was still, or only part of it concentrating on some issue, it would come seeping into his consciousness.

_help us.. save us.. free us.._

Of course, he searched for the source of that message, sometimes going out alone into the streets – his first overnight had been the result of one such search; he'd thought he'd found it in the shelter, with that compacted mass of human misery, but by the following morning, when the police arrived to take him home, he'd realized that although the misery was real, and he was very happy to help in his small, insignificant way, it wasn't the origin of the Whisper (as he came to call it).

He continued to hear the Whisper best, of course, within the TARDIS. So he would often simply sit inside, concentrating, reaching out to try to find the source. He never did, and after a while it became simply a part of the background 'noise' of his life, fading in and out of consciousness. He decided that he'd solve the mystery in time, when he'd learned enough, and went on with his non-studies; absorbing all the world's knowledge without even trying.

He had a very peculiar relationship with that knowledge. It seemed – as when he took those A-levels quizzes after his first day of school – that he never needed to actually _learn_ anything; the knowledge was already there, buried deep within his brain – or in the air all around him, waiting to be recognized. He'd ask a question, or have one asked of him, and the answer would simply be there in his awareness. Even the intricate dance of his father's work in nuclear physics was plainly writ upon his world – but then, that was merely another variation of the music he'd listened to all his life.

His greatest joy those three years was found in helping others, and so nudging the Song of Humanity continuously unfolding around him closer into harmony with the Song of the Universe. And so, he also unwittingly helped his parents, too, pulling them out of the rut they'd been hiding in with jobs and paperwork, reminding them of the joy they'd had in their previous lives dashing around the cosmos, _helping._ And they – pulling their older children along, too, when they could be pried from their studies – began reaching out again as well, looking for ways to help others, lifting their Songs up to the stars.

^..^

The spring he turned fifteen, the Whisper returned, stronger and more insistent. He began hearing it almost constantly, as if the senders were getting desperate. He spent long hours inside the hollowed-out TARDIS coral, flinging his mind out along the corridors of space and Time he'd mapped years before, seeking the source; the living coral now listening too, and assisting his search. And together they found a path.

Joshua was barely aware of the first transfer, so in tune with the coral, so concentrating on seeking the source, that when he opened his eyes and looked through the entry gap on red grasses and orange skies he simply gaped, not comprehending what had happened for a moment. Then memory and realization flooded in, and for a moment he was only fifteen again, frightened down to his toes. Then...

_**CRAA-AAA-AAACK!**_

When his ears could hear past the thunder, and his eyes could see past the flash, he found himself and the coral inside a vast rough-hewn rock chamber filled with people in formal-looking robes, staring down at him from ranks of seats ranging high up the chamber's sides. And before him, arms wide in welcome, stood a woman in white.


	4. Aria Coloratura

**_A/N:_**_ This point marks the start of our various guest stars' entries into the story, and I feel compelled to point out that many of their scenes actually take place in _vastly different_ time periods from that of our heroes, so please pay attention to the time stamps at the top of each chapter to (hopefully) avoid confusion. Merci._

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_.  
_

**Aria Coloratura**

_**The Citadel on Gallifrey, Original Universe; several centuries earlier**_

Time Lord Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar (or simply Romana, as she preferred) sat in the Council Chamber within the Panopticon, under the dome of the Citadel, NOT fidgeting. She never fidgeted. She had the ability to sit perfectly still for hours, so still that an observer might have thought she'd silently slipped into death, but no; though muscles and sinews never twitched, eyelids never blinked, lungs performed so slowly and lightly that no slight shifting of robes could be seen, her mind never stopped. Never. Part of that brilliant mind remained ever tuned to the immediate surroundings, so that she might at any given moment insert a pithy comment, or a piercing question, or pronounce the decision that had crystalized within. But the greater part of that mind was never still, questing endlessly far beyond the Council Chamber (or wherever she was), puzzling over whatever problems were currently on the table, or calculating bits of the Skasis Paradigm or some other intriguing mathematical arcania, or reviewing what was known of the current whereabouts and activities of certain high-profile individuals, including – always – the one calling himself the Doctor. Damn him.

So she was actually quite aware of the moment it first began. Councillor Joharan was rambling on in his usual monotone about the findings of an investigation into the doings on some rather insignificant planet, when a single second suddenly stretched into several, as though time itself had been briefly dilated. "So, during the last century, the inhabitants have made signi-i-i-i-i-i-ificant changes to their social – "

"What was _that?"_ Romana rapped out, sharply.

"I beg your pardon, Lady?" blinked Joharan.

"Did no one else notice?" She looked around the room. Most of the various Councillors and Cardinals were regarding her with confused surprise, but a few – half a dozen at most – showed on their faces that they'd also been aware of the glitch. Romana peremptorily waved Joharan back to his seat. "All those who _did_ notice that, please step forward." Six, no, seven junior Councillors rose to their feet and stepped up near the podium. All of them were young, in only their second or third centuries, and many of the statesmen remaining in their seats began to whisper to each other. The juniors noticed, and began visibly to doubt themselves.

"_Silence!"_ Romana sent a brief glare about the chamber, then stepped down past the podium to the small group. "Pay no attention to these ossified fools. What did you sense?"

The first of the group, fixed by her stare, swallowed hard. "It seemed as though time paused, Lady President, like a wave passing through the room."

The others agreed. "A momentary time dilation, Lady."

"Have you ever sensed this before?" They agreed that they had not been aware of it, but then...

Romana considered for several moments. "Well, unless it begins to happen regularly, I suppose we've nothing to wo-o-o-o-orry about." She paused. "Right. Well, so much for that. Start worrying." She looked at each of her seven, seeing that they had all caught that one, too. Then, looking further, many of the remaining council members also looked startled; that wave hadn't escaped their no-longer-speech-hypnotized notice.

She stepped back up to the podium, and addressed the entire Council again. "Find out what that is, what's causing it, and how we can stop it. All of you. I want full reports just as soon as you can bring them – any detail might prove to be the key. Go!" Not exactly the normal, highly ceremonial ending to a Council meeting, but then, this wasn't normal, even for a body used to dealing with Time and all its variations. Far from it.

^..^

Several days had passed since the advent of the time dilations. At first, only one in ten of the Time Lords then on Gallifrey appeared to be sensitive enough to detect them; these individuals were spread out across the planet's surface and sent into nearby space as monitors. The patterns they detected were confusing at first, but finally Romana herself put it together: the dilations were coming in waves emanating from somewhere within the Citadel, spreading out in all directions independent of mass or gravity. Then, when they reached the outer edge of the Porterion Nebula (containing both the Kasterborous Constellation and Gallifrey itself, as well as the homes of several other races including the Nestene Consciousness and the Gelth), the waves somehow bounced back, returning at the same speed to their origin, as if they were ripples bouncing off the lake shoreline.

As the days wore on, the dilations became more pronounced, and the pattern settled down into a regular pulse. Unfortunately, the pulse itself was noticeably speeding up, just as more and more of the population became sensitive to the phenomenon. Romana calculated that at the current rate of increase, they had less than six weeks before the pulses merged into a single, solid pause – effectively locking down the entire Nebula.

The next step was finding the actual source. While the Council met and wept over their list of enemies, trying to determine who could have devised and sent such a dreadful weapon, Romana simply gathered together the best of the sensitives and did a grid search. (All their instruments had so far proven useless in detecting that source – even the most advanced TARDIS's were unable to help their pilots, reporting merely that something was interfering with their sensors.)

It took several hours of careful coordination and observations, but the team of sensitives finally coagulated on the spot they determined to be the epicenter. Right back where they started: the floor of the Council Chamber in the Panopticon.

"But there's _nothing he-e-e-e-e-ere!"_ Romana seethed in frustration.

"Lady President!" came an astonished cry from the ranks. "I believe I may have the answer!" The ancient Castellan, Spandrell, old even by Time Lord standards, came tottering forth. "Lady, may I approach? This is for your ears only."

"Come, then. We've no time for ceremony. Say it out!"

The retired guard blinked, the habit of obedience warring with that of secrecy. Obedience won. "My Lady. It's the Eye. The Eye of Harmony is buried in a secret chamber beneath this very room."

"The Eye is a fairy tale. We need truth, not tales, you old foo-o-o-o-ol!"

"No, Lady President. It is the truth. The Eye was rediscovered by none other than the Doctor, some time ago, when I still held my post in truth. It is the heart of a black hole that powers our world – and the Rod and Sash you carry are not merely symbols, they are the tools for controlling it. Were you not told this when you took office?"

"My predecessor died before I was elected, you may remember. Is this true, then? Who else can vouch for this?"

"I can, Lady President." A stir went through the chamber, as a regal figure in white robes rose from her seat near the Chamber floor.

Romana bowed her head respectfully to the older woman – even Presidents show deference where it is due. "Lady Tis'hania? You were there, also?"

"I did not witness the events in person, no, but I had them from the source. And regardless of whatever else you may think of my son, he does not possess the ability to li-i-i-i-i-i-ie to a TruthSeeker." Lady Tis'hania tilted her head slightly towards Romana as she gave this reminder of her abilities and the Office her white robes signified.

(One part of Romana's mind took a brief moment to admire the way the other woman so regally ignored the time dilation – few others in this crisis apart from perhaps Romana herself were able to carry it off with that much _panache_.)

"Very well, Lady Tis'hania. I accept your witness." Romana sighed, then turned and mounted the dais to her seat, turning again to stand before it and address the Council. Such was her presence (as it had always been) that the shocked murmurs which had begun to circulate in reaction to the revelations from the floor instantly silenced when she raised one hand. "Well," she continued, "it seems the Eye has lost its Harmony, and it now falls to our shoulders to find that Harmony again." She looked slowly around the chamber at the befuddled and outraged expressions, then gave a humorless laugh. "I'm open to suggestions."

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_**A/N:** It always aggravates me when an author creates a very unusual name, but gives no hint as to how it should be pronounced. If you are as particular as I am: the apostrophe in Tis'hania's name is meant to denote the separation of the S and H sounds; it is pronounced "Tiss-HAY-nee-ah", not "Tish-ay-nee-ah"._


	5. Bellicoso con Basso Continuo

_**A/N:** Just to make it excruciatingly clear: the Doctor in this chapter is the EIGHTH.  
_

_[Added December 2013: And with the advent of _The Day of the Doctor_, this marks a serious departure from Official Who Canon - just so you realize this was written years before Moffat invented the War Doctor (whom my AU "canon" is now skipping over) and all that. My apologies for any confusion.]_

* * *

**Bellicoso con Basso Continuo**

_**The Citadel on Gallifrey, Original Universe; one century before the present**_

Gallifrey was burning.

The war was not going well at all. The Daleks, whom everyone had thought had been completely wiped out (more than once!), had come sweeping back out of oblivion and stormed across the stars like the very hounds of hell. There was no sane way of counting them all, even – they had perfected the use of fugue fighting: single Daleks and entire squadrons all continuously jumping back bare seconds or minutes while the battle raged, coming up behind the enemy to destroy them just as they were pulling their own triggers. The Time Lords quickly realized and adapted those same tactics, and each dogfight breaking out between single opponents quickly blossomed into hundreds of duplicates of the same pair fighting over the same patch of space until one happened to blunder into the path of a laser shot fired minutes or hours before – often from his own gun. Pitifully, the Daleks seemed just that slight bit better at managing the intricacies of technique, their computer brains – patched into the single massive Emperor's mind – able to compute the hundreds of trajectories instantly, maneuvering the Time Lords into those laser beams more often than not.

And then the Daleks began fugue jumping back into _other_ battles, over and over, turning the tides that had once run against them back against the Time Lords, who were forced to do the same themselves. Single armies multiplied into hundreds, as the time stream was violated again and again, wreaking unimagined havoc on the entire sector. Lesser beings, caught up in the storm unaware, died but once, but those advanced enough to perceive the truth died a thousand times.

Between fugue fighting and their own ways of mass producing themselves, the Daleks outnumbered the Time Lords by the thousands. Unfortunately, the Time Lords themselves had no such easy out; they had to reproduce the normal way, and their numbers quickly collapsed.

So the Daleks had marched across space from Arcadia to Porterion Nebula itself, bringing the fight to the Time Lords' own home, and began raining fire from the skies, as they shot down every TARDIS and every trans-flyer raised to meet them. A thousand-mile-long firestorm began raging across the face of Gallifrey, and the entire Dalek fleet, ten million ships strong, was called in to witness the final victory.

^..^

The Doctor managed to dodge the Dalek fleet and its bombardment of the planet, and brought his TARDIS inside the Citadel, _whooshing_ it into existence just inside the dome, then flying straight across the city and landing, skidding, near the Panopticon. He jumped out of the blue box through the open door – hanging from a single hinge on one side, several large black scars marking blast damage from Dalek weaponry on every outer surface – and ran, limping, dodging debris and frantic, running citizens, to the side entry of the Council Chamber. He felt as if every wound he'd picked up in eight lifetimes – and yes, every one of the seven fatal ones, as well – had all come back to plague him at once.

The Council was assembled, as it always was, ignoring the devastating bombardment outside the dome, listening to the Lord President Rassilon ranting. _Fossilized fools!_ thought the Doctor, furiously. _Arrogant cowards, sitting safe in here yapping while the rest of us go out and fight for them! Arguing over precedence while Gallifrey crumbles into flaming dust around them!_

He paused just inside the doorway, behind the other onlookers, searching the crowd for Lord Presonne, the Commander of the Seven Armies, who just _might_ be sensible enough to listen to reason and give the orders so desperately needed to mount a last-ditch defense of the planet. _If we can recall enough fighters in time, if there are still enough left who have mastered this fugue fighting, we might be able to hold them off long enough for an evacuation._ He ran through the short list of possible rendezvous points in his racing mind. _What a pitiful end to a mighty race. We stayed aloof in our watch tower far too long, until the Daleks pulled us all the way to the other side, from stone statues to berserker warriors. All these centuries of existence - why could we never learn balance?_

He couldn't find Lord Presonne, but his eyes caught those of another: Lady Tis'hania. She had quietly quit her seat and was unobtrusively making her way to where he stood. He met her partway, and she put her hand on his arm – startling him with the unaccustomed contact – and pulled him behind a pillar.

"This is _madness!"_ she whispered. "They've all gone mad! Chethonal, _help_ me – we've got to _stop_ them!"

He wasn't at all sure which startled him most: her touching him, the use of her childhood nickname for him (it meant Little Man), or the utterly terrified panic in her eternally wise and serene eyes. He opened his mouth to ask her what was going on, but then the crowd of Councillors all around them roared approvingly, and he whipped around and focused on Rassilon's words, which he'd been contemptuously ignoring since he came in.

"Our destiny has come at last! All our long, glorious history, all our knowledge, all our will, all leading to this one single Moment! We will be victorious over ALL of creation! We alone will be the Masters of All! We alone will exist! This Ultimate Sanction will leave none but us alive, and we will remake the universe in our own image, the rulers of all! None but the Time Lords would dare do this! None but the Time Lords _could _do this! This is our ultimate victory! The end of the Daleks! The end of all lesser, material beings! The end of all war, of all strife, of all evil! The End of Time _itself!_"

The Doctor's jaw dropped in horror. Eyes wide, he turned back to the Lady, silently beseeching her to tell him he'd not heard what he just heard. Unfortunately, she had no such comfort to offer. They stared at each other for several long moments, struggling to comprehend, to deal with the horror and come up with a solution, a way to stop this insanity.

In those few seconds, they'd been joined by a third: Lord Presonne had found them. The Doctor turned to him, glad to see the same horror mirrored in his eyes as well – one more sane person. "How is he going to do this?" the Doctor asked.

"His glove. I don't know the specifics, but it's apparently linked into the Eye of Harmony somehow, as well as several other items. I don't know."

"Will it work? Could it actually work? The End of _Time?_"

Presonne nodded unwillingly. "Yes. That I do know. He's serious."

"Can we take him out?"

Presonne shook his head. "You know as well as I do that since that other assassination, the Panopticon has been completely blanketed by targeted force fields. Any distance weapons are useless, and you'll never get near him physically."

"There's got to be something we can do! There's always _something!"_ The Doctor had made his entire life out of pulling the impossible out of a hat; he wasn't going to fold now, when the stakes were at the absolute upper limit.

"The Eye..." whispered Lady Tis'hania. She turned to Presonne, the beginnings of an idea gleaming. "The _Eye._ Lady Romana's Star. Presonne, the time dilations... you remember?"

He drew his breath in, sharply. "Yes.. I was one of the first sensitives. Could that work? Could we reverse that somehow?"

The Doctor pounced. "What are you talking about?"

Presonne took a breath to reply, but Tis'hania broke in. "Here." She touched the Doctor's forehead and linked to his mind, quickly giving him her memories of that long-ago event.

His eyes unfocused, the Doctor searched those memories ferociously, recalling the solution that had been found – and the other attendant dangers that had been warned of at the time. "Yes... it could work." He refocused on the other pair again. "Shit. It's got to. It's the only answer we've got. But..."

All three looked at each other, horror dawning anew at both the dilemma and the solution. Finally, Lady Tis'hania took a deep, steadying breath. "We've no choice. None at all. It's got to be done." She turned back to the Doctor. "I... "

He smiled at her. "I know." To Presonne, then: "Is your ship here?"

"Yes, right outside – the black flitter."

"Take her and go. Get out of here. As far and as fast as you can."

She shook her head. "We can't leave the proceedings!"

"Mother!" It was the first time he'd called her that in centuries. He placed his hands on either side of her face – the first time he'd touched her in centuries, either – and looked intently into her eyes. "Don't argue with me. Just go. Get to Earth. I'll find you there."

She placed her hands over his, tears unexpectedly prickling. "If you survive... You don't even have the Sash for protection." she whispered.

"You weren't supposed to say that," he grinned humorlessly. "But it's me or... all of existence." He shrugged. "Good trade, as far as I'm concerned." He wished he were as brave as his words.

Unable to speak, she closed her eyes, squeezing his hands, and then finally nodded.

He started to turn, but then – surprising even himself – he quickly leaned in and kissed her forehead. Then the Doctor swiveled around, and made for a small, unnoticed side door of the Chamber, leading to back rooms and a hidden staircase, just as a huge explosion from outside announced the cracking of the dome, and the beginning of the end.

_One way or another, it IS the end. _He was going to destroy his own world.


	6. Minuet a Trio

**Minuet a Trio**

_**The Citadel on Gallifrey, Original Universe; the present  
**_

The lady in white smiled at Joshua, and held her hand out to him. "Welcome, oh, welcome!"

He slowly climbed out of the baby TARDIS, eyes wide in shock. "Where am I? Who are you?" He stared around the chamber, seeing over two hundred adults in long formal robes in a dozen bright colors sitting singly on the tiered benches against the walls or standing in small groups on the floor before the dais. They stared back at him, some wildly, some desperately – and some with derision.

"It's only a _boy_!" came a sharp, hissed whisper from a very old, imperious man seated on the bottom row. Several of those near him nodded.

"Is there an age limit on courage now, Lord Salaphin?" the lady in white turned to the old man. "I think not – and the proof stands before thee. Who else has answered our call, these long years? None." She turned back to Joshua. "Ignore that old fool. I welcome you to Gallifrey, and offer you our heartfelt gratitude for following our cry for help."

"G – Gallifrey?" Joshua gulped. Suddenly his father's stories of his past life – the Doctor's past – were standing before him in the flesh.

"You know the name?" The Time Lady took a step closer to him, peering into his face. "Indeed, I sense you are part Time Lord – one of us, yet not." Focusing suddenly on the coral behind him, a six-foot-tall shapeless, hollowed-out lump, she added, "and that's a half-grown TARDIS!" She turned back to Joshua, eyes shining with hope. "Then some of our own people did indeed escape the catastrophe? Tell me, is there a colony somewhere?"

He shook his head. "Just my family – I don't know about anyone else." Something told him to keep names to himself. "But... if this is Gallifrey – the original Gallifrey... that means... " He was breathing heavily, as the realization hit him. His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "That means I'm in the other universe, doesn't it? Somehow you pulled me across the barrier between the worlds."

One final step closer, and she touched him gently on the shoulder. "Apparently so. We knew we were sending our message out across barriers – though we didn't know which ones, or where they'd end up. Our need is so great, so desperate. But I am sorry to have pulled you so far from home." She shook her head, puzzled. "But, if you _have_ come across the Void, then how is it you came to be _there_, yet knowing of us, of Gallifrey?"

"My parents crossed over many years ago, before I was born. My father is... half Time Lord." Again, he didn't know why, but he chose not to give the Doctor's name just then. "It's a very long story."

The Lady smiled at him again. "We've plenty of time." She began to lead him off the dais, over to an empty bench on one side of the hall. They were halfway there when the air was split again.

_**CRAAA-AA-AAA-AACK!**_

Just in front of the baby coral, a shaft of pure white light split the air with a roar of thunder, and a figure appeared, stumbling, then falling to her hands and knees. Even as the first crash still echoed from the chamber walls, the brilliant crack between the worlds snapped closed with another tremendous boom and disappeared, leaving them all temporarily blind and deafened.

Younger than the rest, and facing away from the crack, Joshua's eyes and ears cleared first. He darted back to the figure, shouting "Mum!" For of course, it was Rose. He helped her sit back, then realized that not only was she much younger than when he last saw her, but she... _felt_ different. "Mum?" he asked again, tentatively, before the realization hit. "You're... Mum's twin. The other Rose. Aren't you?"

Dazed, frightened, Rose stared around her wildly for a moment, then focused on the young man kneeling in front of her. She clutched at him, then made herself take a deep breath. "Joshua? You're Joshua?" He nodded. "Then we're... We've crossed over." Another nod. She looked around again, then suddenly froze, her eyes unfocusing. A look of bereft terror stole across her face. "Doctor...?" she whispered. Panic rising, she clutched at him again. "I can't feel him! Joshua, I can't feel him! I can't hear him! The Doctor's _gone!"_

He took her hands in both of his. "You were with him just now, right? Then he's still back in the other universe." He tried to think of some comfort to offer her, but came up empty, and simply squeezed her hands. She gasped, shaking, and curled over, grasping his hands tightly in return, trying to hold herself together against the awful, aching emptiness within her mind where the Doctor's constant, loving presence had just been ripped away by the closing walls between realities.

The Time Lady had walked up behind Joshua again. "'The Doctor'?" she asked. "You _know_ my son?"

Rose took several deep, gasping breaths and straightened up again, blinking up at the woman in white, astonished. "Your son?" Then, making a supreme effort to _think_, she pushed past her devastating loss and reached mentally for the memories she had seen in her bondmate's mind, memories of his mother, the last few terrible times he'd seen her. She nodded. "Yes. I know him." Suddenly feeling herself at a distinct disadvantage there on the floor, looking up at the other woman, she climbed to her feet with Joshua's help, and faced the Lady squarely. "The Doctor is my bondmate."

Astonishment shone on the woman's face. "You? You're a.. a human! You expect me to believe that _you_ are bonded to my _son?"_

The flash of insulted anger helped steady Rose. She answered levelly, "Yes, Lady Tis'hania. Yes, I know your name, your face. And your song. He sang it to me – not long ago, after we were reunited, when we'd been parted for so long – we thought forever. Then he found me again, and we created the Life Bond, and he sang me your song." The memory of that beautiful, heartwrenching song of eternal love, Tis'hania's Tears, floating up through the corin canopy on the alternate Gallifrey, would always remain one of the most cherished remembrances of her life.

Tis'hania was taken aback. She stared at the younger woman for several long moments. "Well. I see," was all she could come up with.

Rose sensed she'd made her point and dropped it. She looked around the chamber, seeing for the first time all the other occupants, all staring at the trio on the dais, then focusing on the chamber itself, recognizing it, as well, from the Doctor's memories. "This is... the Council Chamber. In the Citadel. But... hold on. Gallifrey was locked. The whole sector is time locked. How could we be here?" She turned back to Tis'hania, trying not to let the terror she felt stealing over her show. "What... is going _on _here?"

"Yes, the sector was time locked – all but this very chamber. Somehow, the force fields surrounding and permeating this building kept the lock from taking effect completely here." Lady Tis'hania suddenly looked exhausted, gaunt. "We're trapped here, those you see. We have been locked into this room and a few bare chambers and anterooms while the universe went on beyond the lock. We _are_ affected by the lock in some ways – we don't age, don't sleep, don't eat. We simply exist. Outside this building, Gallifrey is frozen – existing eternally in the Moment that the lock was applied. But inside, we sense the passage of time outside the sector. We are naught but ghosts, eternally trapped within these walls.

"And we've been here like this for over one hundred years."

Rose and Joshua were shocked, horrified. His hand unconsciously sought hers, and she clasped it back, recognizing in some back corner of her mind the reversal of her's and the Doctor's longstanding habit. "A hundred years..." she whispered.

"Yes. That is why we've been sending out that call for help, these last decades. The call that brought you here."

"But what can we do? What could _we_ possibly do, that all of you can't?"

Tis'hania held out her hands to them, palms up, beseeching. "Undo the lock. There is a way – but we cannot do it, it must be done by an outsider. Let the world outside recommence, let Gallifrey finish burning. It will die, and all of us with it, in a matter of minutes. Let us go. Give us peace."

Rose's jaw dropped, as another wave of horrified understanding came crashing over her. She closed her eyes, grappling with the concepts just laid out to her, her free hand drifting up to cover her mouth. Then her mind flashed back, again, to the Doctor's memories, of what he had been through after leaving her in the other universe, when the Master had returned and temporarily broken the time lock.

Her eyes flew back open, and darted around the chamber, searching for the men in red and black who still haunted her bondmate's nightmares. Not seeing them, she refocused on the Time Lady in front of her. She hadn't been a part of it then, but...

"And the End of Time? The Ultimate Sanction? You expect us to let you go through with that, after everything the Doctor – my bondmate – your _son_ – did to prevent it - _twice_?"

Tis'hania lifted her chin. Somehow she hadn't expected the younger woman to know about that. "That plan is dead – as dead as Rassilon himself. We who are left have no desire, now, to take such unthinkable steps."

"Rassilon's _dead?_ I thought you couldn't die in here. And where's the Master?"

"Also dead. They fought each other to the death when they were returned here and the lock reinstated by the Doctor."

Rose's eyes narrowed. "Prove it."

This was too much for the Time Lady's dignity. She almost hissed back, "You doubt _me?_ Who are _you_ to doubt _me?_"

The two women stared at each other for several pregnant seconds, while the entire chamber held its collective breath. Then Rose, eyebrows arching, said levelly, "Ma'am, with all due respect – you are my mother-in-law, after all – weird as that is..." She shook her head slightly to disentangle herself from that muddled sentence, returning to drive home her main point. "I have faced down _much_ more fearsome beasts than you."

Tis'hania's jaw dropped. "More fearsome..." She didn't know whether to be outraged or amused at the final word.

A beat, then: "Not even the top ten," Rose added.

The Time Lady stared at her, unbelieving, for several more seconds – and then she snorted, and suddenly she laughed – a creaky, slightly uncertain laugh, as if it hadn't been used for over a hundred years. Joshua glanced at Rose, his mouth trying to grin, but the devastation she still felt within washed over him, and he squeezed her hand again, and they simply stood, waiting.

Tis'hania looked at Rose, measuring her anew, then said, "I begin to see why my son chose you." Then she turned, and beckoned them to follow her to the far end of the chamber. "Come. You asked for proof. I shall give you all the proof you desire."

They followed her to what was obviously the main entrance, but which had been covered up with a makeshift curtain, stitched somehow together from the outer robes of the refugees marooned within. Two men in guard uniforms sprang to posts on either side. Tis'hania stopped several feet short of the curtain and turned to her followers. "We had no desire to keep this always in view – we were being driven out of our wits by it." Seeing that her oblique warning had been recognized, she stepped to one side, then turned and nodded to the guards, who reached for the ropes and dropped the curtain to the floor.

Revealing madness.

As if a god had pushed the pause button on a worldwide DVD, a single moment in hell was preserved eternally through the wide glass doors and windows facing Rose and Joshua. Debris was falling from the orange sky – including huge pieces of the dome that had once arched far overhead, and dozens of alien fighting spacecraft, some in pieces, all trailing long tails of black and green smoke.. Frozen flames sprouted from ruined buildings across the open park before them, flowing halfway to the sky. And people – handfuls of ragged, terrified refugees caught mid-stride, running towards the Council building, panic writ on their faces as it had been for a hundred years.

And all this was but backdrop to the horror directly before them.

Less than a step from the doors, two men were falling together to the ground, locked together in a final, fatal embrace, their faces contorted in grimaces of extreme, snarling fury and contempt. The taller man, in sumptuous scarlet-and-gold robes, had his left hand clenched around the other's neck, his heavy metal glove arcing a visible electric current to and through the smaller man's head and torso. The man in black, meanwhile, had both his hands wrapped around the handle of the dagger plunged hilt-deep in the scarlet man's chest, even as his head was thrown back in agony from the electrocution, his skull visible through his skin. Both men's frozen expressions snarled the insane extremes of agony mixed with fury incarnate at the other.

Tis'hania spoke again. "Do you know them?"

Rose nodded slowly, and named the two men. "Lord Rassilon and the Master."

"As we were sent back here, the Master attacked Rassilon, and they fought hand-to-hand until they fell out the door together into the locked world outside. They'll both be dead when they hit the ground – if they ever do." She paused, then went on. "You see Rassilon's glove? It was that which he would have used to enact the Ultimate Sanction. He was the only one who could use it, who knew the secrets of it. His plan died with him. The rest of us... only want peace."

Unable to look any more, Rose twisted away, hands held shakily to her face. The Time Lady gestured again to the guards, who raised the curtain to block the hellish view once more.

Joshua had been silently absorbing the sights, the words, and the emotions of those around him – particularly Rose. He turned with her, and pulled her into his young arms for a moment. As they stood there, then, the feeling of destiny which had been growing within him since he'd climbed inside the coral back in his father's lab crystallized into the surety that his entire short life had been leading to this hour. This moment. This decision.

He gave Rose a final squeeze, then dropped his arms and stepped back, turning towards their hostess and speaking up for the first time in minutes. "What can I do? How can I fix this?"

Rose heard the tone of decision in his voice and gazed at him, torn between pride and terror. He was his father's son. But he would never be a boy again.

Tis'hania also sensed the sudden change, the new maturity in the young man before her. She could only hope that he'd live to enjoy it, and not have it cut short by what she was about to ask him to do. Gravely, she repeated, "Undo the time lock. I'll tell you how it may be done. Undo the lock, and let us go. Let Gallifrey die." The ghost of an ironic smile crossed her lips.

"It's time."


	7. Adagissimo e Pianissimo

**Adagissimo e Pianissimo**

_**Gallifrey, the Alternate Universe, the present **_

The Doctor crouched on his knees in the long red grass of Gallifrey, a universe away from his beloved, hunched over with his arms wrapped around his head almost buried in the ground, screaming. He screamed her name, over and over, until his voice gave out, and still he screamed, soundlessly, rocking back and forth. With all the long hell he had just lived through, then climbing slowly back up from the abyss with Rose's help on their recent "honeymoon", he was utterly unable to process or accept her having been ripped away from him like that: gone so completely from mind and body in an instant.

Corin and Jenny had crawled over to him, one on each side, holding him between them, until at long last the wrenching spasms ended. When he finally went limp, they stood and pulled him up together, slowly walking him back into the TARDIS and down the corridors to his own room. He fell onto his bed and lay there, face buried in his pillow, as if he'd never move again.

Jenny turned and sadly walked back to the control room to get more readings, if she could, leaving Corin alone in the Doctor's room. He stared around him, realizing the depths of his twin's long, despairing obsession, during those twelve endless years traveling with Jenny before he had hopped unknowingly back into the alternate universe and been reunited with his lost love.

Just as the Doctor, as the amnesiac human John Smith hiding from the Family of Blood, had filled a notebook with words and images from the dreams he continued to have of his real life, the Doctor had filled his room with memories of Rose. All the bits and pieces she'd left behind in the TARDIS had been collected here, the little mementos and personal belongings strewn across the various surfaces. Even the clothes she'd worn had been gathered – her pink fifties "Elvis-watching" dress hung from hook in the corner, and her Union Jack t-shirt that had so captivated Jack Harkness had been turned into the Doctor's pillowcase.

But more, her image was on every wall. The Doctor had long had the quirky habit of drawing or painting people from his life on the walls of his room – if one looked long enough, one could find every companion who had ever traveled with the Doctor represented. Now every space which had been blank in Corin's last memory of this room had been filled in with a different view of a particular blonde, in every mood from laughing to angry. And across from the bed, where a large bureau (now removed) had previously taken up most of the wall, that surface had been painted over with one large, incredibly vivid image of Rose on the beach – _that_ beach – gazing at the onlooker through pain-drenched eyes, tear tracks on her face. And scrawled across the coral wall above in blood-red letters was a cry from deep within the Doctor's tortured soul: _How could I have left you? How can you not be here? All I am is shards of pain – no light, no heat, no sound. Nothing exists but the echo of your name._

Corin shook his head, slowly. He turned and looked again at the Doctor's head buried in the flag shirt. "You thought you could escape it, didn't you?" he whispered. "All those centuries, always running away from love. You pick it up when it's offered, enjoy it for a day or a year, and then run before they crawl too deep inside. Until you met the one you couldn't run from – but you discovered that too late. Too late."

He'd thought the Doctor was asleep, but his hoarse whisper came from the pillow. "I can't do it again. I won't survive losing her again. I can't _breathe..._"

Corin did the only thing he could. He lightly rested his hand on his twin's hair, and reached out with his mind, smoothing the other's conscious mind under the edge of unaccustomed slumber. He nudged until he knew the Doctor was too far under for dreams, then softly withdrew. He reached for the TARDIS's mind, asking her to keep her pilot under, dreamlessly, for several hours, till he'd slept himself out. Then he left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

^..^

The Doctor drifted slowly up to consciousness again, hearing the soft, hypnotic buzz of the TARDIS fade away. He knew she'd been helping him sleep. He reached automatically for his bondmate's mind, as he always did, and the raw aching emptiness of that corner of his mind burst upon him at the same instant the memories did. He cried out, wordlessly, and felt the TARDIS's awareness instantly return to him, humming again, trying to soothe him.

He lashed out at her, angrily, rejecting her comfort. She hummed again, even stronger, a thread of hope joining the weave of her mental melodies.

_*Hope?!*_ His mental voice broke into words, harsh and despairing. *_How can you offer me hope?*_ A Jenny-flavored thread wove through his mind in response – and then the scents of gentle chiding, and untried possibilities.

He lay still for several long moments, as her soft assault relaxed his clenched mind, and he let himself be soothed just the tiniest bit. *_OK. I'll try. There's got to be _something _we can try.* _She chirped approvingly, and then faded out with a last, almost physical nudge to get up, accompanied by the scent of soap. He grimaced and complied, stumbling first to the shower before finding some clean clothes.

He followed his nose to the TARDIS kitchen, finding the strong Carderian coffee Jenny preferred – and had influenced him over the years into liking, too – waiting in the pot. He poured himself a big mug of it and doctored it properly with just the right amount of sugar and a dash of Peruvian chili powder, then set off in search of his daughter and his twin. No sign of them in the library or the other common rooms, or the control room. He was about to check the situation on the monitor when he noticed the front door was hanging open, so he took the invitation and walked out, expecting to step back onto Gallifrey.

Instead, he found himself on the familiar Italian tile in the front hall of the Tyler mansion. He glanced up – yes, the blasted portrait of his twin and Rose was still hanging on the wall – and quickly looked away again, trying to dodge the stabbing pain at their happy faces. He almost succeeded, as he whirled towards the door on the opposite side of the hall, hearing voices coming from the room beyond.

He stepped through into the living room, finding Jenny, Corin, and Rose sitting on the couches, talking – and this time he wasn't able to dodge the sight of the other version of his bondmate, snuggled up so closely to her husband's side. He gasped, drawing their attention, and hunched over slightly, trying to breathe.

Rose realized instantly that it was her presence which had caused his reaction. She pushed aside her own pain for her son, and stood. "I'm sorry. I should leave." She turned to walk out, but he put out a hand and stopped her.

"No. Please stay. Please..." _You may be the only piece of her I have left._ He didn't say it aloud, but she caught it from his look, and slowly nodded, sadly. She sat down again next to Corin, while the Doctor forced himself to walk over and sit beside Jenny on the opposite couch. "Well?" he asked his daughter.

Jenny took a deep breath, and spoke gently but matter-of-fact. "The crack was sealed completely – not even a residual trace. We tried jumping back a few minutes, but the TARDIS couldn't land while it was open – it had only opened twice for a few seconds each, and either we – or the baby TARDIS – were right there at the time, so the paradox shield kept us off. We stayed for a while, but the crack never reappeared, nor could the TARDIS latch on to any readings to guess what created it, or how to open another one.

"The only thing we can do at this point is go back through the rabbit hole in John's time into our own universe and try from there. I'm sorry, Dad. I've tried everything I can think of, but there's just nothing we can do from this side." She laid her hand on his arm, gently pleading – for what, she wasn't quite sure.

He patted her hand briefly, then rubbed his face, trying to think of something to try. There was nothing. Finally, he nodded, accepting her verdict. He looked across at the other couple, managing not to flinch again at the sight, managing not to stare at Rose. "And you?" he asked simply.

Instead, it was they who flinched, both of them dropping their gazes to their laps, then at each other. Corin turned his tormented eyes back to the Doctor. "I can't go with you. I can't... Our lives are here, now." He looked down for a moment again, forcing himself to take a deep breath. "Doctor... He's your son, more than mine. He's a Time Lord. Two hearts. All the mental and psychic abilities. All." He stopped, blinking back tears. "I should have called you back years ago, but I couldn't. I kept hanging on." Beside him, Rose wasn't trying to hold her tears back, though she managed to stifle her sobs. He went on, "This is my fault. I held on too long. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Now..." He took another deep breath, visibly shifting gears, trying to be positive. "Find him... and... keep him with you. Raise him and teach him right. I did my best, teaching him all I could, but... I'm not fully Time Lord any more. He's yours."

Tears streaming, Rose made herself look at the Doctor again. "And someday, if you can... send him back to us."

Stunned, all the Doctor could do was nod.

Jenny looked at her dad. When he turned to her, she said, softly, "Let's go."

He nodded again. "Yeah."

They all stood up, looking at each other awkwardly, tragically. Rose whispered, "I just wish there was some way you could let us know... Some way of sending a message."

"A message.. a _message!"_ The Doctor snapped his fingers, eyes lighting. "Stay right there!" He ran back into the TARDIS, the others ignoring his order and following, mystified, even Corin. The Doctor rummaged around under the control room floor grates for several minutes, then snapped his fingers again, remembering where he'd put the item he was searching for. He ran to his own room, grabbed it out of a bottom drawer, then back to the control room.

"Remember this?" he asked Corin, showing him a small red crystal set into an intricate matrix of golden wires.

Corin peered at it, confused, then his face cleared. "The Devorian crystal!"

"Right." The Doctor turned to Rose. "Back when you were first trapped here, and I was trying to think of a way to send _you_ a message, I came up with this, but it couldn't work – 'cause I had no way of sending _it_ to you. It's a simple receiver, nothing fancy. Won't even receive anything more complicated than a single pulse. But it _will_ receive that." He gently picked up her hand, placing the crystal carefully into her palm and closing her fingers over it. He held her hand in both of his for a moment, looking into her eyes.

"When this crystal glows, you'll know he's safe."


	8. Fugue Allargando

_**Author's Note:** My apologies in advance for burning your eyes out below with all the bolds and italics. I had wanted to identify my three soloists in this movement with left-, center-, and right-justified text, but this blasted website doesn't recognize the right! And their horizontal rules - and my kitty separator - would only have done half the job: separation but not identification. So, I am stuck with this poor third choice. Again, I apologize - and I promise that this is the only movement in which I will torture you thusly._

* * *

**Fugue Allargando**

The Present

In a pitch-black space far underneath the Council Chamber, the shapeless lump of a baby TARDIS oozed into existence (not yet old enough to whoosh properly) on the coordinates given her by Lady Tis'hania. A startled female squeak came from inside the coral, then a young man's voice said, "Hold on a tick." The sound of deep pockets being rummaged around in was replaced after a few seconds with a metallic click, and a pen-sized torch began shining around, flashing off the walls.

Rose chuckled, the first mirth she'd been able to feel since stumbling through the crack between the worlds. "You got any bananas in there? Or marshmallows?"

Joshua was bewildered for a second, then flashed back to his parents' stories of trans- dimensional pockets and chuckled back. "Nope, sorry. Haven't figured out how to stretch these pockets yet." He carefully climbed out of the coral, then shined the torch back at the gap so Rose could follow. Then, clasping hands, they began searching for the route further down, to the Chamber holding the Eye of Harmony.

**Several Centuries Earlier**

**Lady Romana paused on the top step of the tiny back service stairway the ancient Castellan had led her to, mentally reviewing his hazy directions to the Chamber holding the Eye of Harmony. Apparently there was a whole system of shafts, rooms, stairways and corridors hidden beneath the Panopticon, unknown and unused for centuries. She could only hope the way had not been blocked somewhere by debris or rockfall.**

**She had gathered the best minds she could find to wrestle with the problem of the deteriorating black hole Rassilon had captured and put into balance with Gallifrey, using its output to power the entire planet, along with all of the Time Lords' manipulations of space and time. The solution they had at last come up with was highly speculative, and had only a slim chance of working at all, but it was all they had – and time was running out. The waves of time dilations were steadily increasing in duration, while their intervals decreased even faster. The six weeks she had initially estimated before sector lockdown may have been too generous in the end.**

**Romana compulsively checked her equipment again, making sure the Sash was properly hung around her torso, the Rod at her side, and the fearful weapon she was about to use securely stored inside its protective pouch hanging from her neck. Then, giving herself a mental shake, she flicked her fingers at the crystalline torch she carried, bringing forth its luminescent glow – and flicked again to increase the light level – and began to descend.**

_One Century Before the Present_

_The door was blocked. The Doctor rammed his shoulder at it one final time, but it refused to budge. Cursing, he backed off, and reconsidered his options. If he remembered correctly – and he usually did – there was another small door into the underground complex nestled into the side of the Panopticon, part way around from the side entrance he had used a few minutes ago into the Council Chamber itself. Well, there was no help for it; he was going to have to find it again._

_He crept back up the stairs he'd just come down and made his way back into the Chamber, sneaking around the outer wall through the tunnels under the soaring ranks of box seats ranging up the Chamber's six sides, and out the side door, then doubled back along the massive quarried stone walls. The door was hidden just beyond one of the twelve arched buttresses – two on each corner – which supported the tower walls. He dodged falling debris and frantic citizens seeking shelter from the Dalek attack ships, and almost missed the door, hidden by a large piece of scorched metal. Burning his hands on the hot piece of flitter skin – one more injury to add to his list – he lifted it and threw it aside, then wrenched open the door and threw himself down the steps inside._

_Halfway down, he tripped over some unseen clutter on the steps and fell, rolling, the rest of the way to a landing in the dark. Cursing creatively, the Doctor searched blindly through his coat pockets and came up with a torch he'd liberated from the human soldiers who'd tried to hold him captive a few years before on Earth, and stabbed the button, hoping the batteries were still good. They were, barely. A weak shaft of light showed him a musty, cobwebbed corridor leading off into the darkness. He took a deep breath, and began to follow it._

"It's a good thing those force fields extend down underneath the tower," Rose told Joshua, "or else we'd never get through here, even with your TARDIS taking us past the blocked stairs at the entrance."

"Yeah. Would have been even better if we'd been able to take the coral directly to the Eye chamber, but without those coordinates... Well, we'll just have to find our way." He stopped and looked at Rose, tipping the torch up so it lit both their faces. "I'm more worried about getting back to it after, though. Let's both make sure we know the way."

She nodded, and thereafter they paused frequently to shine the light back the way they'd come to memorize the view, and Rose began scuffing arrows in the thick dust on the floor.

**Talking through a dilation was annoying. Trying to walk through one was even more off-putting. Her Time Lord mind, with centuries of practice at handling time variances, kept moving at what felt like its normal pace, but her foot suddenly refused to move for several seconds, poised in mid-stride several inches above the floor. Even Romana sometimes battled the fear she was about to tip over, as the dilations began affecting her sense of balance, as well. I'll be soooo glad when this is over she thought – not allowing herself to think for a second that the plan might not succeed. **

**She snorted in annoyance as her crystal torch showed her yet another dead end. These two levels were warrens of interconnected rooms and corridors, none of which went directly from one staircase to the next, nor were those stairs even opposite each other. She turned and backtracked again to her last turning point and tried the other way.**

_Ka-BOOM! The Doctor had been repeatedly jarred by increasingly disruptive distant explosions – but that one wasn't distant at all. It felt like it was right above him, and it threw him off his feet. He was thrown across the tunnel, smashing his already-sore shoulder against the rock wall and falling in a heap on the dusty floor. Pain shot down his arm to his hand – luckily his left – turning it numb. Groaning, he dragged himself up and set off again. He had to hurry. This wasn't going to last much longer._

They almost missed it – the shadows thrown by the small torch off the rough-hewn rock walls covered the small entrance rather than revealing it. Joshua felt the drift of colder air on his cheek as they passed by, though, and stopped, pulling Rose through the doorway behind him. Once inside the tiny chamber, they heard an eerie, ghostly sound drifting from the gap opposite, reminiscent of wind blowing across glass bottles. The gap was almost blocked by an ancient rockfall, but Joshua knew by the signs carved above the lintel that this was the entrance to the final stairway. They worked together to shift some of the rocks, and slithered through. "Good thing we're both small," Rose grinned.

**At last Romana found the symbols she was looking for, the ancient marks carved into the stone above a half-sized door. She pushed open the door and ducked down to enter yet another stairway leading down, which immediately began curving around to the left. After a hundred steps, and at least one complete circle, the wall to the inside of the curve fell away, and she looked down into an immense circular chamber of rough-hewn rock. The stairway she was on continued to climb down the outer wall, carved out of the living rock. As the insides of the steps were beginning to crumble, she turned her back to the wall and crept down sideways, keeping her eyes on the center of the chamber.**

_The Doctor stood at the bottom of the steps, his now useless torch hanging at his side. He stared at the roiling, multicolor cloud of brilliant plasma and felt his stomach churning in dread – seemingly in time with the cloud's movements. He hadn't felt this fear since the last time he'd looked into the heart of a time vortex – the Untempered Schism, when he was eight years old, at his Initiation. Without Rassilon's Sash to protect him, he wasn't even sure he'd make it to the center of the vortex, let alone do what he had come to do. But he had to try. Time was melting away above him even as he hesitated. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and took that first step._

"I can't go any further," Rose whispered, staring at the vortex. She knew she was brave, but she also knew her limits as a human. "This is where I stop." She turned to Joshua, pulling him in for a tight hug. "Oh, god. Are you sure you can do this?"

Joshua hugged her back, hard. "Lady Tis'hania said my lack of Rassilon's Imprimatur – whatever the hell that is – would protect me, at least for a short time. I'll just have to move quickly."

"I'll wait right here."

"No. Go back to the TARDIS and wait for me there. I've set it so it will take you out, as we agreed – all you have to do is shout 'Go!'"

She shook her head. "We've only the one torch, Joshua. If I take it, you'll never find your way back. No. We'll finish this together." She gave him a little push. "Go on."

**Romana took a deep breath, adjusting the Sash one more time so the gems lay across her hearts. She put her crystalline torch on the floor, then drew the Rod out of her belt where she'd been carrying it, and held it in her right hand like a sword. She didn't know if it were necessary, but it made her feel better. This next step scared the crap out of her – not that she'd ever admit it to anyone. She took hold of the pouch around her neck with her left hand, and began to walk forward, into the heart of the vortex.**

_Whirling, swirling, all of Time compressed_ images danced around him, flashing by in nanoseconds **the Rod began to heat up in her hand** _he stumbled and staggered, only knowing up from down by the rock clinging to his feet_ how far had he come? **drawing her forward of its own will** _pain from his injuries magnifying with each step_ surely the entire chamber wasn't this big **cleaving the vortex in two**

_The Doctor lurched suddenly out of the vortex and into the clear space in the center – the eye of the storm. _

His vision clearing at last, Joshua stumbled out to see a thick, waist-high black pillar in the middle of the clearing.

**At last, there it was, the Eye of Harmony: a jet-black obelisk. Romana switched the Rod to her left hand, and carefully opened her pouch with her right, bringing out the Type 8 Warp Star.**

_Hanging in perfect balance above the Eye was a pulsing Warp Star, the largest he'd ever seen._

Joshua stared at the flashing white jewel floating above the pillar, swallowing hard.

**Pointing the Rod at the Eye, she gingerly held the Star between thumb and forefinger**

_The Doctor took a deep breath and planted his feet far apart for balance_

He gathered all his young courage, and reached out

**then she reached out over the Eye**

_then stretched his hand out_

and touched the Star

**and pushed the Star into place**

_and touched the Star_

CRAAA-

**-AAA-**

_-AAACK!_


	9. Madrigal a Trio

**Madrigal a Trio**

_**CRAA-AAA-ACK!**_

"NOBODY MOVE!" Romana's voice whipped through the dying echo of the thundercrack. She'd reacted first, but just a hair too late: each of them had instantly flinched back as the other two suddenly appeared, equidistant around the waist-high obelisk of the Eye of Harmony, each grabbing the Warp Star suspended above – and as they whipped their hands back slightly, the Star itself split with an electric sizzle – and became three, one in each hand.

Now they all stood there, staring at each other, mouths dropping open, their Stars almost touching in the air above the center of the obelisk.

"Who the _hell –_ " she began, when she was cut off.

"_Romana?_"

She turned to him, the older of the two strangers. "And _you_ are?"

"I'm the Doctor."

It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. Of _course_ _he'd_ come to mess things up. Royally. But this wasn't the face the last reports of his whereabouts held. "You've regenerated," she accused him, eyes narrowing. With one corner of her mind, she realized the ludicrous futility of their positions, and lowered her hand with the Star, the others following suit a moment later.

He was still staring at her as if she were a ghost. "Several times," he answered the charge. "Romana, you..." He blinked as it hit him. "Shit. We're here at different times. _From_ different times."

"How do you know that?"

He made a lightning decision to lay it all out – this was no time to be tiptoeing around. "Because you disappeared about two hundred years ago."

For once, her mighty intellect failed her. "I _what?"_

He nodded at the Warp Star in her hand. "You're here to stop the time dilations, aren't you?" She nodded. "You never returned above from the Eye. A search was mounted after the dilations suddenly stopped, but you were never found."

"But they did stop?"

"Obviously."

"Then why are _you_ here?"

The Doctor sighed. "To undo what you did. Are doing. You're using that Warp Star to counterbalance the black hole of the Eye, to control the dilations. I'm here to set it to the opposite balance, to reinforce them, and lock down the sector."

She was horrified, as he knew she would be. "By the names of all the stars of Rassilon, _why?_"

He grinned humorlessly. "Funny you should use that phrase. Because of Rassilon himself. He returned after you disappeared, and retook the Presidency. And then the Daleks returned, as well, by the millions. It was all-out war. _And we lost._ We're losing, right now, in my time. Gallifrey is burning. It's all over. But _Rassilon_," he said the name like a curse word, "refuses to die, refuses to admit defeat. He's planning to bring about the end of all time itself, presumably elevating the few remaining Time Lords to pure consciousness, the only beings in existence."

Romana's expression had turned to complete disbelief as he spoke, and now she spat out, "You are _insane._"

He grinned again at her displeasure. "Honey, I'm not the one who's insane. _He_ is. But don't take just my word for it. Look into my mind. See the truth yourself."

She stared at him a moment, deciding, then tucked the Rod back into her belt again, and reached out her hand to touch his forehead. Instantly his memories of the last half hour of his life played themselves out for her, at lightning speed. Her jaw dropped, as well as her hand, and she staggered back a pace, horror-struck.

While Romana was absorbing his startling disclosures, the Doctor turned to the third one present: a young man, now that he took a good look at him. A _very_ young man. Who had been staring mostly at himself all this time. "Good lord, you're just a kid! Who are you?" the Doctor asked him.

Joshua had been thinking furiously, through every bit of knowledge he possessed – even the bits he hadn't realized before this moment – about time paradoxes. Another small part of his mind had been grappling with the realization that this was a prior regeneration of the Doctor, the man who would become his own father. Why hadn't Dad ever mentioned any part of this story? There was a paradox here – or at least, one could so easily be created, with a single careless word. Joshua had to tread very carefully in order to prevent his own existence – and his presence here – from being sidetracked.

He realized the Doctor was still looking at him closely. "I.. I don't think I should give you my name. I'm... from your future."

Romana had caught the slight emphasis. "His _personal_ future?"

Joshua nodded.

Romana swore creatively (causing the Doctor to glance at her with surprised approval). "This room is _saturated_ with potential paradoxes!" She turned back to Joshua. "Can you tell us _why_ you're here? And from when – how far after him?"

He thought carefully. "About a hundred years later. And... I'm here to undo the time lock, and let it return to normal." He saw the Doctor take a sharp breath, about to protest, and shook his head quickly to forestall him. "Rassilon's dead. I saw it myself. And his plan is dead with him. The others who are left in the Council Chamber have been living as ghosts, only half alive, unable to leave, but aware of the passage of time outside the reaches of the lock. They just want to find peace."

The Doctor was shaking his head furiously. "You can't believe anything that lot says! Besides, we're wasting time! I've got to lock it all down NOW!"

Romana snorted at him derisively. "Oh, calm down, you fool! We're outside of time inside this vortex. Look!" She started to point out to the vortex still swirling all around them, then suddenly remembered how the Rod had acted as she was crossing through, as if it were cleaving the churning clouds of time in two and pulling her across. Realizing it herself as she spoke, she said, "That's what the Rod is for! Not just controlling the Eye itself, but controlling the vortex, as well!" She turned back to the Doctor. "So relax. Whatever we decide to do, we can do it at precisely the right time."

She turned back to Joshua. "I understand why you can't tell _him_ things that he can't know right now. But can you tell _me? _Will you let me look into your mind to see if you have the truth of the situation in your time?"

Joshua thought carefully. He'd never even heard of Romana before, she'd never been in any of his father's stories about his past life, or his mother's. _If she disappeared way back then, as the Doctor said, then does that mean she has no chance of influencing my past?_

The Doctor saw his hesitation. "I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, my boy, but you can trust Romana. Go ahead."

Joshua swallowed hard, then decided. He turned to Romana and nodded. She transferred her Star to her left hand, and raised her right to his forehead as she'd done to the Doctor.

He felt her presence in his mind, lightly – she wasn't prying. *_Just show me the current situation above*_ came her internal voice.

Using all the mental control Corin had taught him in Scotland three summers before, Joshua brought up only the memory of Lady Tis'hania explaining why she'd brought him across the worlds. He saw Romana gasp at the image of the familiar face, and shook his head slightly, swiftly. *_He can't know!*_ he thought at her, and she nodded. So he replayed what the Time Lady had said, and then the sight outside the huge glass doorways of the frozen world above, framing Rassilon and the Master's mutual death grips.

He quickly shut his mental door on the scene when he turned to Rose and hugged her, but not quite quickly enough. *_Who was that?*_ Romana asked. He just shook his head, not replying. *_Very well.*_ Her tone was amused, but she left it, and withdrew from his mind, dropping her hand again.

She took a deep breath, reviewing it again, and then turned to the Doctor. "He's telling the truth. Rassilon is dead, and his plan. And I offer you this proof: if the Time Lock had permeated the Council Chamber with the rest of the sector, how is it _he_ got here? And if it _hadn't_, and yet Rassilon lived, how is it he hasn't already ended time? Think that one through, genius."

The Doctor thought about it for a moment, then decided to accept it at face value. Much as he and the Time Lady had butted heads through the years, he still trusted her judgment. "All right. So what do we do now?"

"What we came here to do – each of us. And at the proper times. There is far, far more at stake than our three lives. All of reality is riding on our shoulders." She looked around at each of the others. "Agreed?"

They both nodded. The Doctor flashed her a rakish smile. "Fun, isn't it?"

That time she did roll her eyes, but didn't bother to reply. "First things first." She thought a moment, then turned back to the Doctor. "What _exactly_ did you see when you entered this clearing?"

He thought back, glancing down at the Warp Star in his hand. It was quiet now, dark. "A single Warp Star hanging above the Eye, in balance, flashing at about... four times a second."

"The controlled explosion setting, then, just as we calculated. That will regulate the Eye and stop the time dilations. So. First we have to find the correct moment in time again." She took the Rod – a thick, ornate staff about two feet long, flaring at the end to hold several gems, including a large white diamond, a Gallifreyan white point star, at the tip – into her left hand again and faced out, towards the edge of the swirling vortex surrounding them. She held the Rod out before her, turning it slowly, reaching out to it with her mind to search out its secrets.

As before, when it had drawn her through the vortex, the Rod pulled itself straight in her hand, then pulled her back around until the diamond was pointing directly towards the heart of the obelisk. It stopped just short of actually touching it, however. "You'd better step back," she told the men, and they both moved around to stand slightly behind her.

"Now what?" asked Joshua. "What are you going to do?"

The Doctor looked at him. "You're untested, aren't you? If you grew up during the Time Lock, you couldn't have lived on Gallifrey, and you certainly never stood before the Untempered Schism when you were eight, did you?" The boy shook his head. He didn't even know what the older man was talking about. "Look now. Look at the vortex. What do you see? It's not the same as the Schism, but close..."

Joshua looked past Romana's shoulder and concentrated on the wall of the vortex opposite them. He'd been deliberately blocking out the whispers that had been tickling his mind since he'd stepped into the vortex; now he dropped his mental block and began to listen, reaching out with his mind to the swirling cloud. (Remembering some boys' reactions to the Schism, the Doctor quietly stepped closer to the young man, in case he bolted.)

Now the whispers flooded in to his mind, a million voices, a billion notes, all at once. He gasped, but didn't flinch, letting the volume flow unchecked, as if his mind were a hollow pipe. Then, gradually, he applied his mental will, constricting the flow and making it slow down. Suddenly he heard a single clear melody standing out above the rest like a banner flying in sunshine against a stormy sky. He held the melody loosely, replaying it – and then another melody nearby stood out, and another, and another – and then the entire cacophony fell into place, an impossibly gigantic symphony orchestra, each miniscule instrument playing its tiny part of the whole, its own unique melody that blended with the others nearby, and they with others, out to the very edges, to form the Song he'd been listening to his entire life.

His vision cleared, and he realized he'd lifted one hand towards the vortex – and the cloud had reacted to his unconscious direction, slowing its maddening swirling colors until its pattern could be consciously seen. He looked at his two companions and smiled, a joyous, exited grin, his eyes brimming with the possibilities he'd just discovered.

Both their jaws had dropped, as they saw him take control. They turned and looked at each other, then, and the Doctor shook his head, telling Romana, "I think he just passed. Better than _I_ did, that's for sure."

She replied, slowly, "If he is the future of the Time Lords, I no longer weep for the vision _you_ showed me." Another thought struck her, then, and she voiced it as well. "That also means that both of you must survive this meeting, and return to your own times. That's why I disappeared. I'll have to stay behind to finish it."

The Doctor shook his head, unwilling to accept her verdict. "Romana..."

She shook her head at him, the regal President of the Time Lords once more. "No. I will not sacrifice the future to prolong the past. There's been far, far too much of that during these last centuries of the Time Lord's reign. Even in _my_ time." She glared at her old friend – her old foe. "So stop arguing." (Neither of them noticed Joshua's startled reaction to her first sentence, and he shook his head to clear that recent memory.)

She squared her shoulders and turned back to the obelisk, raising the Rod again. She told Joshua over her shoulder, "Help me, if you can, to find the moment I stepped through the vortex." Then, as an afterthought, she turned and handed her Warp Star to the Doctor. "Get ready to put that into place. Remember, the controlled explosion setting." He nodded, and she turned back, taking the Rod in both hands and concentrating.

She reached out and linked her mind lightly to Joshua's – realizing only at that moment that she'd unconsciously picked up his name the last time; she was going to have to be careful not to say it aloud before the Doctor. Together, they turned their minds to controlling the sweep of time in the vortex. She quickly realized that, unpracticed as he was, and although his understanding of Time was completely different from any she'd encountered before (Music? How fascinating!), his control was already much finer than hers, so she mentally relaxed and let him take the lead. The vortex whirled before them too fast to see (the Doctor closed his eyes, dizzy), then began slowing, as Joshua followed her melody to the source. When it slowed to a crawl, Romana hissed, "Doctor! Get ready!"

Their eyes flew open wide as the vortex stopped its motion completely, and a ghostly, transparent Romana stepped out of it, passing directly _through_ both the Doctor and Romana herself in her way, reaching her hand with the Star out to the balance point. The Doctor reacted an instant later, mimicking the ghost, flicking the control on his Star and placing it in the same space above the obelisk. Joshua slowed it down, further, further, then breathed, _"Now!"_ and the Doctor let go of the Star and pulled his hand back, leaving it suspended in the air. The ghost Romana disappeared in a flash of light – and the Star began its pulsing flash.

Joshua released his hold on Time, and they all breathed a sigh of relief. "One down, two to go," said Romana.

She turned to the Doctor. "You have to get out before the Time Lock traps you, too. I presume your TARDIS is up above?" He nodded. "How long will it take you to get to it?"

"Ten minutes, fifteen if you can."

"Fifteen it is. We'll set the lock the moment you stepped inside the vortex – which means you need to leave fifteen minutes before then. Don't meet yourself coming down!"

He took a deep breath. "Romana..."

She cut him off. "Don't. Don't ruin my perfectly awful image of you by turning all noble or maudlin. I couldn't stand that." She turned her back on him with a sniff.

He stared at her back for a moment, then let his breath out – not quite a snort – and gave a small, rueful smile. Then he turned to the mysterious young Time Lord – he was that, now – and held out his hand. "I hope to meet you again after this happened to both of us. If not, sir, I am honored to have met you now – and I hope I've treated you right so far."

Joshua smiled, and shook his hand – only a tiny bit star-struck now. "I hope to meet you again very soon – I have something that belongs to you."

"Oh, you had to go ruin it, didn't you? That mystery is going to drive me nuts for – I don't even want to know how long." Nevertheless, he smiled again.

Romana and Joshua turned back to the vortex and ran Time again, until – even more swiftly, this time – Joshua found the Doctor's melody approaching the vortex, and saw his ghostly image slip through. Then he backed it up slowly, until Romana said "That's about fifteen", then held it still again.

They turned to the Doctor together. He tossed them both an ironic salute, suddenly realizing he still held his own version of the Warp Star, which he quickly handed to Joshua. Then he swung around and dashed through the vortex, wanting through it and out as fast as possible.

Romana turned back to Joshua. "To make the Time Lock, we need to set all three of these Warp Stars around the sides of the Eye, all in controlled explosions." She showed him the switch on the Stars he held, then where to place them. "You put those two up, and I'll move the third. This Sash should keep it from singeing me."

He nodded, and they went back to work, Joshua letting the fifteen minutes slip quickly through his mental fingers until the ghost Doctor appeared again. He froze Time just as the flash appeared that heralded the Doctor's disappearance to this time outside time, and they moved swiftly to place the three Stars. Romana nodded to him, and he simply released the hold – and they were both jarred off their feet by a single massive jolt shaking the entire chamber.

"I hope that was the Lock taking effect?" Romana asked. He reached out mentally, and showed her the Time Eddy that had formed within the vortex, freezing the sector of space containing Gallifrey, and they both heaved another sigh of relief.

"Now for you," she began, but he quickly broke in.

"I can't leave before I got here. You remember the woman who was with me? She's waiting outside the vortex. I have to get her out, too."

"Who is she? Oh! Is _she_ the 'something' that belongs to the Doctor?"

"Yes. His bondmate."

She was floored. "You're _joking!"_

He grinned back at her, instinctively liking her immensely, wanting someone to talk to. "It gets better. Both of them were... well, _duplicated_ is the best word, I suppose, a while back. And the other versions of both of them are my parents."

Floored before, now she was gobsmacked. Her jaw dropped. "You... are a fascinating young man. I wish I had time to get to know you. But we need to get this done."

He said, a little wistfully, "There's so many things I wish I could ask you."

"Pick one."

He struggled a bit, and then laughed. "Just one? Pfft. OK – what's Rassilon's Imprimatur? She – Lady Tis'hania – said my _lack_ of it would protect me here."

Her eyes opened wider. "Really? Wow. It refers to the special type of nucleus of our body's cells, that allows us to manipulate time, among other things. But you must have it! Or else..." She took up the Rod again, and pointed it this time at his chest, reaching out along it with her mind. "Yes, you do have it now – your cells were changed when you peered into the heart of the vortex." She grinned at him. "And you've also gained your regenerative ability. Thirteen lives to spend."

This time his jaw dropped, and then his expression changed to a delighted grin.

She shook her head, clearing it of wishes and if-onlys, returning to the present. "Have you an escape plan ready?" He nodded. "How long do you need?"

"Fifteen minutes should do for us, as well. But.. what about you? I can't just leave you in here."

She smiled at his youthful earnestness. "Don't worry about me. I have an idea." Realizing even as she said it that she _did_ have the beginnings of a plan.

"How will you break the time lock? I get the impression you can't just turn those things off." He pointed to the three pulsing Stars, now somehow attached to the three sides of the obelisk.

She gazed at him levelly for several seconds, then simply shook her head. He started to protest, but she held up her hand, silencing him. "No. Just go. Walk into the future, Joshua. And don't look back. Don't _ever_ look back." She smiled at him, then. "Maybe we'll meet again. I certainly hope so. And if so, don't forget – I want the _whole_ story then."

He nodded slowly, then reached to shake her hand – then suddenly changed his mind and reached out with both arms, pulling her into a hug. She blinked, shocked at the unexpected familiarity, then grinned and hugged him back. They both dropped their arms, then, and she smiled again, grimly this time. "Let's do this."

They turned back to the vortex one more time, and Joshua moved them to the sight of his own ghost entering the vortex. He slowed time to normal, watching until his ghost disappeared in the same flash of light. Then he turned back to Romana – but she wouldn't let him have any final words. "Go!" So he saluted her, as the Doctor had done, and then hit the vortex at a run.

Romana had the time stream under a light, monitoring control with the Rod and her mind. She let it go forward at the normal pace, counting off fifteen minutes – and then a few more, to let Joshua and his companion (the Doctor's _bondmate?!) _get well away. She carefully placed the Rod, still active, on top of the obelisk, removing her hand slowly. After a minute, she breathed again – it was working; the Rod was still keeping the vortex in sync with normal time outside it.

She took another close look at the Warp Star closest to her, and grinned. Yup, it had a time delay fuse, that she could still set, even though it was already in controlled detonation. She took up Rassilon's Sash again and wrapped it around her hand, then carefully set the delay fuse on each of the three Stars to the maximum – twenty minutes.

Then she turned, and _RAN._


	10. Nocturne Nero

**Nocturne Nero**

_**One century before the present**_

Panting heavily, the Doctor paused, leaning against the wall of the tunnel and listening hard. No sound from beyond the corner. He was just about to launch himself around it when he saw the weak flash of a torch, and threw himself into the doorway beside him, flicking off his own torch and hiding in the shadows. Seconds later, he saw his earlier self stagger past on his way down to the chamber of the Eye of Harmony. He grinned, and waited until the footsteps had moved on around the next bend.

At least he'd been able to catch his breath. He knew he was near the top of the maze – and sure enough, around the next corner was the bottom of the staircase leading up to the back door of the Council Chamber. Or it had been. A large wooden beam from the ceiling had fallen down and blocked the door at the base of the stairs – no wonder he hadn't been able to open that door before. He wasn't going to waste time now, either – his target was outside, anyway, not inside the Chamber above.

He sprinted on down the hall and found the stairs leading to the outside door. Mindful of his tumble down, he watched his step as best he could at a dead run, and only slipped twice – catching himself each time – on the debris-filled steps. He paused briefly at the top, peering out the door at the scene outside, which was just as horrific as he remembered.

Smoke and flames were everywhere. It wasn't as bad inside the Citadel as outside just yet, but that wouldn't last much longer. The Dalek fleet was visibly massing outside the dome for the final assault. Citizens were running everywhere in mass panic, trying to find a safe spot, or transport out, or their loved ones. The Doctor took a deep breath and joined them, dodging around flaming debris and other runners as he made his way back around the side of the Panopticon tower holding the Council Chamber.

He was about halfway back around when the sky split open and knocked him off his feet with the loudest explosion he'd ever heard – the end of the dome. Death and destruction began raining from above; huge shards of the dome along with Dalek incendiary bombs and death rays and pieces of the last few Time Lord defensive ships blanketed the Citadel, turning it into a death trap.

Up and running again, he saw the TARDIS finally heave into view, just a hundred feet away through the smoke. He put on a last burst of speed – but too late. A lateral trans-flyer wing crashed into the ground not two feet away, burning white-hot. The force of the impact threw him off his feet again, slamming him sideways into the remains of a rock wall, even as the extreme heat from the wreckage singed his side and caused his clothes to burst into flame.

He managed to roll over and put out the flames, screaming as the motion revealed several broken ribs, and a churning, stabbing pain inside hinted of dire internal injuries to match the severe burns on his skin. Clutching his crushed and bruised side, he used every ounce of willpower to force himself to his feet again and stagger the last few feet into the sanctuary of that beloved blue box and fall to the floor again.

Another huge explosion buffeted the box, and he crawled over to the control panel, his eyes fighting to see the switches through the haze of the regenerative vortex energy already beginning to cover his hands and face. He found the right one and threw it, sending the TARDIS into the void, and then collapsed for the last time, sinking into the blessed blankness of unconsciousness as the familiar agony of regeneration overtook that from his injuries.

^..^

He came to slowly, unwillingly, floating up through layers of mental wool and cotton, feeling as though the TARDIS were dragging him up through the seven levels of hell. Finally conscious, he kept his eyes closed, unwilling to get up and admit he was alive. He knew he'd regenerated, because this body _felt_ different, in so many intangible ways – and because all his prior injuries were gone, only a mental echo of their pain remaining.

Worse, and growing ever more worse, and very real, was the pain of the memory of what he'd just done. Double genocide.

All the tens of millions of Daleks had been gathered around and above Gallifrey, so they'd all been caught in the Time Lock, never to be released.

But worse, the pitiful handfuls of his own people who had survived – but not for much longer – the terrible Dalek onslaught, had all just perished at his own hand.

The fact that in doing so, he'd saved all the rest of reality, all the uncountable gazillions of lives which would have been wiped off the books, all of Time _itself, _did little to counterbalance the weight of the new title he knew he'd carry for the rest of his unnatural life: the killer of his own people. The words washed over him again and again, staining his soul and every cell of his new body with the terrible, unbleachable crime.

He knew he needed to get up, to set course for Earth, and find his mother, the Time Lady Tis'hania. He had a pretty good idea where to begin looking. As he lay there, though, unwilling – unable – to move, a tiny bit of memory managed to make its way through the morass his mind kept trying to disengage from, and one particular frame from that last terrible dash to the TARDIS stood before his closed eyes in all its majestic horror.

Not a hundred feet from the TARDIS, a black flitter lay in ruins, crushed and smoking from the shards of the dome.

A black flitter.

Lord Presonne's.

Lady Tis'hania hadn't made it out.

"_Nooooooooooooooooooo......."_

^..^

At last the tears he'd spent eight lifetimes suppressing were spent, seeping through the TARDIS floor and into her depths, merging (he felt) into the soul of the Time Ship herself. He wondered fleetingly whether either of them would ever know happiness again.

He forced himself to his feet and stumbled to his room, running from the memories. He didn't want to remember. He never wanted to remember again. He knew he'd never be able to rid himself of the stain on his soul, or the knowledge of the broad outlines of his crime, but he didn't want to live with the details always hovering over his shoulder. Life was going to be hard enough from now on as it was.

So he blocked off his memory, packing up the details of the past few hours into a tight ball and burying it deep within the TARDIS, and slamming the mental door as tightly shut as if it were sealed in densest amber, throwing away the key and pouring superglue into the lock.

He took a shower, standing under the stream of water for over an hour, wishing it could wash away the stain as it took the last of the dirt and oil and soot from his dead home planet down the drain. He studied his new face in the mirror for a bit: could be worse. A bit daft, with those big ears. He flinched away from the terrible frozen depths of his new blue eyes – ice blue, to match their contents.

Then, turning away, he went down to the wardrobe to look for some new clothes. Something in black leather seemed about right. As he passed through the control room, suddenly he hated it all, the bright shiny look of the place. He told the TARDIS to change it; he didn't care what to. Just change it. Please.

He found the leather jacket he was looking for, and pulled it on over a nondescript jumper and slacks, and found some shoes to match. Then he made himself some breakfast, choking down the sawdust meal, and went back to the control room.

She'd changed, all right. Suddenly the walls were a soft rosy-orange, with coral pillars seemingly growing up through the floor up to the ceiling. She'd changed the floorboards to a metal grating, allowing him to see through to the various compartments underneath. All the hated white and harsh lighting on gleaming metal surfaces was gone.

He spun on his heel, taking it all in. _Going au naturelle? _he asked her, and she hummed a satisfied purr in his mind in response. She was tired of the white mess dress, too.

He smiled a grim little smile, gone as soon as it came. At least _she_ could be happy. Maybe happy enough for both of them.

He walked up to the new console and slowly toured it, finding all the controls again – same places, just looked a little different. Coming back to the navigational array, he closed his eyes and lightly brushed his hand over the controls, not looking. _Take me somewhere. I don't care where. Just away. Just away....._

The TARDIS _whooshed_, and they were gone.


	11. Presto Affrettando

**Presto Affrettando**

_**The present**_

Lady Tis'hania, along with most of the rest of the Council Chamber's century-long prisoners, stood before the broad glass entryway, gazing out onto the frozen scene of their dying world, waiting. Just waiting.

It had been at least a half hour since their two rescuers had climbed back into the half-grown TARDIS coral and oozed out to the coordinates she'd provided of the wide hallway on the next level down (past the blocked staircase the Councillors had never been able to clear). They had looked at each other, those two earnest, open young faces, and then asked her to come with them.

She'd smiled, sorrowfully. "There's only room for two in there. And I will not sacrifice the future – my son's future, with both of you – in order to prolong the dead and dying past. But I thank you. And..." Tears unexpectedly prickling her ancient-feeling eyes, she'd turned to Rose, her son's bondmate. "Will you give him a message for me?"

The young woman had caught her breath, the pain from the empty spot inside her mind where her bondmate's presence should have been stabbing through her eyes again. She'd swallowed hard, then whispered, "If I ever see him again...."

Tis'hania had caught up both her hands and held them tightly, willing Rose to look into her eyes. "You will," she told her, with the quiet emphasis of absolute certainty. "If I know my son at all, and I do, he will move the stars themselves to find you again." She'd waited until Rose nodded, trying to smile, and then gave her the message.

Now she waited with the others for the results of their quest. She'd tried to follow them with her mindskills, but the ancient forcefields which had kept them trapped in this half-life also dampened those skills, as they always had, and the two had simply vanished beyond her ken.

Time kept ticking away, and the Councillors at the edges of the group were beginning to shift, melting away back to their seats, dejected. Another failed attempt at escape. Still Tis'hania stood, statue-like, gazing out past the two men in their death throes just outside the door.

And then... and then....

With a sound like a gigantic, planet-sized piece of silk were being torn apart, the world outside began moving again. In tiny fits and starts at first, as though the god who had pushed Pause so long before was now clicking through a frame at a time, then faster and faster until suddenly things were moving at normal speed, they.... _moved._ Time had begun again at last.

The Time Lock was broken.

Gallifrey could truly die at last.

Just as the realization was dawning upon the watchers inside the Chamber, yet another now-familiar sound occurred behind them.

_**CRAA-AAA-AA-AAACK!**_

As one, they whirled, to find the crack between the worlds open once more in the center of the Chamber. And it stayed open.

"Go! GO!" Tis'hania's regal voice rapped out above the dying echoes from the thunderclap. Stiffly, the crowd began to move toward the crack, then they began to run, up the stairs to the dais, then through the crack and, incredibly, unbelievingly, out onto red grass under orange skies, not seen by their eyes for centuries.

Tis'hania started to move with the rest, then stopped and whirled. There were still people outside the building, as well, people who had been frozen in mid-step on their way to the supposed safety of the Council Chamber for a century.

"Help me!" she called to the others nearby. The guards reacted first, realizing what she needed, and together they pulled open the huge glass doors. Rassilon and the Master had indeed fallen lifelessly on the ground; the guards hurriedly pulled their corpses to one side, then stood waving everyone in. Tis'hania and a few others stood just inside the door, making a living corridor to the crack, urging the refugees on.

When all the people who were in view had made it, scrambling through the re-started rain of death from above, the guards turned and charged inside after them, sweeping the others along and through. They barely made it.

A tremendous rumbling sound had been building, coming from far beyond the skies, beyond the Dalek ships, coming closer and closer. As a massive shock wave hit the planet, grinding every bit of organic matter instantly into dust, the crack between the worlds shuddered and snapped closed, blowing the refugees in the new world off their feet and deafening them with the thunder of the gods.

As her hearing slowly cleared, Tis'hania groaned and pulled herself back to her feet. She looked around, trying to get a quick count of their numbers, trying to see if anyone needed medical assistance.

Everyone seemed shaken, but basically OK. She walked, a little unsteadily, over to the last one who'd made it through the crack before it was sealed forever: a woman in old-fashioned robes, crouched shakily on her hands and knees, head down.

"Are you all right?" Tis'hania asked her.

Exhausted, dazed, – and triumphant, Romana raised her head and smiled.


	12. Lento con Gran Espressione

**Lento con Gran Espressione**

The Doctor stood in the open doorway of the TARDIS, gazing out into empty space, dying inside. He'd been dying for so long, so long – ever since he'd left Rose with his human twin in the alternate world. Those long years alone on the jungle planet, and then traveling with Jenny after she'd found him there, he'd been a walking zombie. Just going through the motions.

The incredible, nuclear-powered joy he'd felt when he'd found himself pulled out of the mirrors and back into Rose's arms – HIS Rose, who'd been twinned herself, just as he had, so now both he and his twin had their own – that joy had been so perfect, so incandescent – and so cruelly, tauntingly short. Just eighteen months of perfect bliss, in the paradise of Bora Bora. (OK, rather less than eighteen, really – it had taken a while for him to accept it and allow her to pull him out of the depths of black depression he'd crawled into.) And then she'd been sucked into the crack and behind the Time Lock.

He stood now at the border of the Lock itself, just at the edge of where the Porterion Nebula used to be, casting its gaudy, multicolor glow into neighboring space. Now there was nothing there. Less than nothing. The entire nebula had been turned into a solid, opaque blackness – not even light could escape the Time Lock.

He and Jenny had returned to their home universe through the hole they'd first accidentally jumped through the other way, and come here, to the exact time – as close as they both could calculate it – that first Joshua and then Rose should have arrived. And there they came to a crashing halt, unable to go further. Everything they'd tried, every sensor, every time or distance jump, every trick of energy circuits and timey wimey loops and sideways philosophy and magic incantations had failed. Everything. Rose – and Joshua – were as unreachable as they had been from the other universe.

He could feel Jenny hovering nearby, a few feet away, could feel her concern for him wafting through the air, afraid he'd do something stupid, something fatal – like jump out the door and through the air lock (like he'd been toying with a few minutes ago). Just then, he didn't have the energy to do anything but stare at the blackness mirroring that in his soul, and silently weep, unconsciously fingering the locket he always wore around his neck, containing her picture and the tiny lock of her hair – once again, these bits and pieces were the only parts of her he had left.

"Dad?" came her soft voice, tentative. "Maybe the answer.. maybe it's in how you made the Time Lock. Tell me how you did that? You've never said..."

He shook his head tiredly. "I don't remember." She took a breath, about to argue, but he held up his hand and stopped her without looking around. "I _don't remember._ I blocked out the memories. They're not there at all."

She waited a bit, then: "How..."

"I gave them to the TARDIS." Weary beyond belief, he turned finally and looked at her through tortured eyes. Then he gave a rueful, defeated shrug. "Can't hurt any worse than I already am."

He reached with his mind to the TARDIS, asking wordlessly for the Time Ship's help. He felt her awareness slide through and around his mind, then she seemed to nudge him from behind, while she floated an image of his own room across his vision. *_My room? Why?*_ he sent the question openly, so Jenny could hear, as well. The ship didn't answer directly, just nudged him again. He shrugged again at Jenny, and then closed the outer door behind him, and trudged down the corridor, Jenny trailing behind.

He stepped through his door, ignoring the tide of black despair that poured over his shoulders, as always, from the images of Rose he'd painted on the walls. *_OK, now what?*_ She nudged him over towards his desk, a massive, high-backed, roll-top affair backed against the far wall, overflowing with papers and nicknacks and scrolls and all the accumulated detritus of nine hundred years spilling out of its hundreds of tiny compartments. *_What? Something in there?*_ He grimaced when an image of himself and Jenny pulling the desk away from the wall floated in his mind. *_You're joking, right? You want us to pull the desk out?*_ Another nudge.

He looked at his daughter and shrugged, and stepped over to one end as she took the other. A huge heave – and no result. *_Well, give us a hand, here, would you? Quarter gravity for a second!*_ That time, as they braced themselves and heaved again, the desk floated up and away from the wall smoothly, if a bit ponderously. The TARDIS eased the gravity back up to normal in a smooth move, so it didn't quite crash back to the floor.

There, on the wall behind the desk, was another painting, one the Doctor didn't recognize, didn't remember doing at all – though it was quite obviously his work. He and Jenny sank to the floor to study it. Three people, two men and a woman, were facing each other over a black obelisk, each of them holding a large white jewel up to the center of the air above the waist-high pillar.

"That looks like you!" said Jenny, pointing to the very young-looking man on one side.

"No..." he whispered through the flood of returning memory – the painting was both the lock and the key. He pointed to the older man. "That's me, there – this was two regens ago." His shaking finger returned to the youngster. "That's... Oh my god. It's Joshua!"

Slowly, he picked up the strands of memory and wove them back together again, telling the story to Jenny. "He never said his name, said he couldn't, because he was from my future." He went on, telling her who the woman was, of Joshua passing the impromptu vortex test, the decision to continue each of their separate missions. "So we set the Star to cancel out the time dilations in Romana's time, then went ahead to my entry – and that's when I got out, in order to escape the Time Lock, so that Joshua would be born and return – though I didn't know that exact detail. I didn't know... he was my son." He buried his face in his hands, as despair swamped him anew, for the son he'd never known – as much his son, born of his twinned self, as he ever could be. And now he feared he never would know him.

Jenny broke into his thoughts then. "Well, they obviously got the Time Lock applied at the right time. But next, they were going to come ahead to when Joshua arrived, to take it back off, right?" He didn't answer, and she touched his arm to get his attention. "Dad?"

He looked up at her, not daring to hope, not yet – and that's when they were knocked sideways by a tremendous jolt, as the TARDIS was rocked by a particle wave flooding through space outside.

They clawed to their feet and ran to the control room, grabbing the monitor to see what had happened. The Porterion nebula had appeared back out of the nothingness, spread through the space nearby as it had been for all of time. "The Time Lock is down! They did it!" Jenny crowed, jubilant. A glance at her Dad's face, though, froze her spirits. He ran the display back a few minutes, then forward again – showing a massive wave of _something_ spreading from the center of the nebula – Gallifrey – out to the edges. There, some of the wave continued on (what had rocked the TARDIS moments before) – but most of it bounced back off the lock boundary and began sweeping back through to the center again.

The Doctor's face went dead white, and he staggered back, collapsing on the jump seat behind him. Jenny ran to his side, clutching his arm, thoroughly alarmed. "Dad? What is it? Dad!"

He stared at her, horrified, and finally choked out, "One hundred years. That reverse wave – it's the nebula catching up to the rest of the universe. One hundred years – compressed down into a single second. Nothing organic can withstand that. Nothing. Nobody." Waves of images flashed through his mind unbidden, of plants and animals – and people – aging a century in an instant, long past death and dying, an entire planet, an entire sector, crumbling to dust as he watched from without. Not even Time Lords would be able to withstand such an onslaught – far past, even, what the Master had subjected him to on the Valiant. The Master had aged his cells unnaturally, but Time itself would blast a body to atoms in an instant.

_How many times must I watch her die, before I can, too?_ Before the concurrent thought – that she'd always come back so far – could even cross his mind, a wave of joy came crashing through his mind and his senses from the TARDIS, and the Time Ship began ringing every bell and alarm she carried. Jenny whirled back to the monitor, even as both Time Lords reached out to the ship's mind to ask what in the nine hells was going on.

Jenny found the answer first, on the monitor. "It's the baby TARDIS! She found her! She's... she's hovering out in space, just outside the edge of the nebula!" She twiddled a couple of dials. "That's odd... She's standing still in space, but moving slowly through time..."

As the information sank into the Doctor's aching brain, he gasped, and smiled – the broadest, most manic smile he'd given in decades. "Oh, Joshua, you are absolutely bloody _brilliant!_" He sprang to the console beside Jenny. "Help me! You've got better control than I do! Move the TARDIS so she's _surrounding_ the baby in space – _carefully_!"

The two Time Lords worked frantically, moving and then nudging the ship into position. The TARDIS sensed what they were doing, and did her best to comply, bringing the precise position in space of her baby inside the control room, in the open area between the ramp and the jump seat.

The Doctor then straightened up, and put his hand gently on the Time Rotor. *_It's all up to you, now, girl. Reach out and catch your baby. Catch her out of Time, and bring her home*._

The lights dimmed slightly, and a soothing hum rose from somewhere deep inside the ship as she reached out. The Doctor and Jenny turned and watched, holding their breath, _willing_ the trick to work.

Slowly, slowly, the outline of the shapeless lump of coral began to appear, ghostlike, then it started filling in, more and more solid, till with a sudden _Pop_, the living coral was there on the grating. The Doctor moaned and raced around to the side, dropping onto his knees before the gap.

And sobbed. There, kneeling inside the hollow, peering out with looks of hopeful terror, were the two people he'd thought had just died. Rose gave an answering sob and reached for her bondmate, who pulled her roughly out and into his arms, holding her as if he'd never let go again, not for an instant. And maybe he wouldn't.

Joshua's expression turned slowly into a delighted smile, as he sat and watched his parents' twins wrap themselves around each other, sobbing brokenly. Suddenly a slender hand appeared in the gap in front of him, and he looked beyond it, startled, into the smiling face of a blonde angel. Stunned, he hesitantly took her hand and climbed out, then stood holding it.

She laughed at him. "Hi. I'm Jenny. Depending on how you look at it, I'm either your sister or your cousin."

"I like cousin!" he said without thinking, then realized he was still clutching her hand and let go, looking down at the floor and flushing. Jenny cut the fifteen-year-old some slack, grinning, and turned deliberately to watch her father and his bondmate again.

The Doctor and Rose were drinking in each other's eyes, foreheads touching. "I thought... I was so afraid I'd lost you again." the doctor whispered.

"I thought so, too," she replied. Then, pulling back a little, "We saw her. Lady Tis'hania." He clenched his eyes shut, not wanting that reminder of his mother, trapped behind the Time Lock – and now... Rose pulled her arms from around his neck and placed a hand on each cheek, tenderly. "We wanted to bring her, but there wasn't room. But she gave me a message for you." She waited till he looked at her again, pain oozing, and then gave him his mother's message, speaking with quiet emphasis.

"She said, 'Tell my son he's the _best_ of Gallifrey – the best of us all. And tell him, I am _so proud_ of him. And I always have been.'"

She watched as the realization of this absolution from the one person he most needed it from sank into her bondmate. His eyes squeezed shut again, he gasped, stifling sobs, trying to breathe. She gathered him in again and held him tightly.

After a few moments, Joshua's voice broke in. "Well, tell him the rest." The Doctor pulled back and looked at Rose, confused – which redoubled when she looked down, blushing. He looked his question at Joshua, seeing him standing there for the first time in – to him – two lifetimes.

Joshua laughed. "She also said she approved your choice of bondmate."

The Doctor managed to put on a completely serious, nonplussed face. "Well of course she did!" He turned back to Rose. "I got my good taste from somewhere!" Finally able to smile, feeling like his face was cracking, flaking stone, they shared a strained chuckle.

Then he gave her a final squeeze, and a tender kiss, and then turned back to Joshua, stepping over to the young man and putting both hands on his shoulders. "Joshua. _Thank you._"

"Did I do the right thing, back then, not telling you who I was?"

"Oh, hell yes. Absolutely. You played it _brilliantly_." And he gave him a huge smile – which faltered a moment later, when it wasn't returned.

Joshua had tears in his eyes. "I'm never going to see my Mum and Dad again, am I?" he whispered, suddenly fifteen again.

The Doctor squeezed his shoulders. "A very wise man once said that words like _never_ and _always_ and _forever_ tend to lose their meaning around this ship. And he was absolutely right. I'd even go so far as to say that she eats _highly improbable_ for breakfast." He squeezed again for emphasis. "You'll see them again. I'm absolutely certain of it. It may take a very, very, very long time – but you're a Time Lord. Time's one thing you have plenty of!" A thought struck him, visibly. "But for now... come with me!" He turned and strode up to the console, Joshua following. He flicked several switches and typed something quickly into the keyboard, then he turned back. "Joshua, push _that_ button!" pointing to it.

Utterly bewildered, Joshua did so, and the Doctor beamed at him. "You just sent a message to your parents, telling them you're all right."

"A message! Can we talk – "

The Doctor shook his head, sadly. "No. All we could manage is a single binary pulse, just enough to flick on a light. But!" And he turned earnest again. "If we can do that, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that someday, you'll find a way back through again. None at all. I promise, Joshua, you will!"

"And in the meantime... !" The Doctor took a step back, taking Jenny's and Rose's hands, then both women took Joshua's hands in turn, completing the circle. With dawning, incredulous joy, the four smiled back and forth.

His twin hearts swelling with so much happiness – a feeling he'd thought he'd _never_ feel again; the Doctor looked around at each beloved face, seeing his joy reflected back on all sides - and from the TARDIS, too, as she hummed happily in their minds and ears. He turned back to the newest arrival.

"Joshua.. welcome to the TARDIS, son. Welcome to the family."


	13. Coda: Con Amore e Speranza

**Coda: Con Amore e Speranza**

Exactly two hundred and fifty-seven souls had made it through the crack between the worlds, escaping their dying planet. Not very many, some said, not enough to start a viable colony, a stable, growing population. But it was all they had. And Tis'hania, for one – and Romana, for another – were not about to just give up. Countless new species had become well-established on countless worlds from just such tiny original numbers.

When word had swept through the group that Lady President Romana herself had come back, seemingly from the dead, and joined them, many had latched onto her as if to a life preserver – and perhaps she was. They'd unanimously voted her back into office, effective immediately, and she'd taken it to heart, throwing herself into the job of organizing various work crews for shelter, food, scouting parties. There had been protests, especially from the most august elders on the Council – but when she'd declared the Council dissolved, and after a single night sleeping on the ground, out in the open drove it home that this was their new, permanent home – the protests died off.

Romana, and Tis'hania, were absolutely determined to make a brand new start on New Gallifrey, and build a society of which they could at long last be proud, after so many centuries of stagnation and decay – and evil, soul-killing rot. This time they were going to do it right. They had no time machines, no vortexes – and perhaps they never would. The Time Lords were no more. They were simple Gallifreyans.

And that's just how it should be.

^..^

Far across the universe, a small red crystal began to glow, and a mother's heart, and a father's, each gave a single, painful lurch, and began beating again. They cried together, tears of joy – and then wiped those tears, and turned to their families, and their friends, and began living once more. Living life to the absolute limit, squeezing every drop of joy and love and goodness they could from every second. They would not detract from their missing son's memory by anything less worthy.

^..^

In another world, another universe, a new family of four stood in a circle by the console of their ship, hands clasped, grinning, weaving the bonds of love and respect that would bind them together forever.

"So. Where do you want to go first?" asked Jenny.

The Doctor laughed at her. "Sweetheart, I couldn't care less. As long as we don't get there for about five days." He dropped her hand, and wrapped his other arm possessively around Rose's waist. "Excuse us," he told the others, and turned and led his wife away down the hall towards his room, to re-establish their Life Bond. (Among other things.)

Jenny turned to Joshua. "Want to see something spectacular, that hasn't been seen in about, oh, a hundred years?" she grinned at him.

"Sure!" Hoping his eyes weren't giving away that he thought she was pretty spectacular herself.

She led him over to the front door and snatched it wide, revealing the Porterion Nebula in all its reestablished glory. Immense swathes of eye-bending colors swirled joyously around the center, the Eye, in which two sister stars could be seen circling each other in their endless dance. All around them, sprinkled throughout the plasma clouds, stars and proto-stars danced and sparkled.

Joshua gasped, as the heavenly songs flooded in. "Listen! Oh, listen!" he breathed.

Jenny looked at him, confused. "Listen?" she asked.

He looked at her, and saw she could not _hear_ what he did. He grinned shyly, and took her hand, then reached out with his mind to hers, offering her his own personal perceptions of the cosmos.

She gasped, even louder than he had a moment ago, and gazed out at the nebula with wide-eyed wonder. Wordlessly, they sank down together and sat for hours, hand in hand, watching and listening as the stars of Gallifrey danced their endless, joyous dance once more.


End file.
